Wildcards are characters that indicate a command applies to all resources whose names match a specified character string.

The asterisk (*) wildcard tells the system to match zero or more specified characters, up to the maximum length of the string. An asterisk can start the character string, end it, appear in the middle, or appear in multiple places in the string. A single * for the name indicates that all resource names for the particular field are to match.

For some values, the * must be a suffix and cannot appear alone. See z/OS MVS System Commands for examples of how to use wildcards in system commands.