Metacharacters in a source name simply match files and behave just like any other search metacharacter.

Metacharacters in a target name are copy-edit commands and work as follows:

• A question mark (?) copies one character unless the character it would copy is a period (.), in which case it copies 0 characters. It also copies 0 characters if it is at the end of the source string.

• An asterisk (*) copies characters from the source name to the target name until it finds a source character that matches the character following it in the target.

• A period (.) in the target name causes the source pointer to match the corresponding "." in the target. They count from the left.

Editing is case-insensitive. If a case conflict between the source and editing string arises, the case in the editing string is used, thus:

    copy file.txt *E.tmp

results in file.txt being copied as filE.tmp.

DosEditName provides applications with the ability to transform a file object name into another name, using an editing string that contains global characters.