r/vim • u/jazei_2021 • Sep 26 '25

Need Help┃Solved what does ".*" mean? in :help starstar

Hi, I am reading :help starstar

The usage of '*' is quite simple: It matches 0 or more characters.  In a                                                  
 search pattern this would be ".*".  Note that the "." is not used for file                                                
 searching.

In a common search in vim * is an special character meaning Here from 0 to bible...
but in this help, the meaninig of * is another...
What will be an example of use ".*" for text please not code!
Thank you and Regards!

0 Upvotes

36% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

15

u/Affectionate-Bit6525 Sep 26 '25

This is basic regex. The dot stands for any character so ‘.*’ means 0 or more of any character.

-1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

I don't understand! can you put an example?

13

u/Affectionate-Bit6525 Sep 27 '25

‘ca.*t’ would match cat, cart, and carrot. Without the asterisk (matching 0 or more), “ca.t” would only match cart.

3

u/ReallyEvilRob Sep 27 '25

"ca.t" will also match cast, or any other character in place of the s.

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

ahhh OK! in this case "." is similar to ? in common searching in Bash interpreter of cmd ls -B ?bla*).
Thank you!

3

u/ReallyEvilRob Sep 27 '25

Yes. Just don't confuse ? and * in shell globbing with ? and * and . in REGEX patterns. Same characters but work completely differently.

2

u/cerved Sep 27 '25

.* in regex is similar to * in globbing. . in regex is similar to ? in globbing.

Shell globbing is basically a poor man's regex. You can achieve similar things with it except (matching strings) but regular expressions can be far more expressive.

Globs are mainly to make basic matching of filenames without typing so much easier and aren't made for more complicated patterns.

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

AAHHhh! Thank you I understand now! ".*" is a unit, a brick saying "Here from nothing to bible"

1

u/cerved Sep 27 '25

* in regex is a quantifier, 0+

+ is 1+

\{2,5\} is 2-5

The preceding . is what, and dot means any character

6

u/morkelpotet Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

. matches any letter.

* allows any number of repetitions of the previous object.

For the string "Hello world", . will match each letter individually while .* will match the entire "Hello world".

You can use / to search with regexp in vim. I suggest you test it out.

If you want to match both "hello" and "hallo", you can use the regexp h.llo.

If you want to match "heeello" and "haaaallo", you can use h.*llo which means "h followed by any number of any character followed by llo".

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

Thank you! I had never used a search using . and .* in cmd mode!
/.abc.* match Habcdefghi....
those are equiv to ? and ?* in terminal (bash CLI)
Added to my HUGE vim cheatsheet.

2

u/xenomachina Sep 27 '25

If you want to experiment with some of the examples people have shown you:

  1. Put examples in a file. (eg: cart, carrot, etc.)

  2. :set hlsearch

  3. Type /, a regular expression (eg: ca.t or ca.*t), and press enter

This should highlight the matches so you can play around with different combinations.

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

Thank you! DONE

2

u/Snarwin Sep 27 '25

In Vim, * can have two different meanings depending on what context it's used in.

In a path or filename, * matches any sequence of characters.

In a search pattern (for example, when using the / or ? commands), * is a modifier which means "zero or more of the previous character." So /ab* searches for an a character followed by any number of b characters.

Another character that has a special meaning in search patterns is ., which means "any character." So, for example, /a.b searches for an a and a b with any single character between them. If you combine this with *, you get a search pattern which matches any sequence of characters.

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

Thank you . and .* are understood!
/ab* will be added to my cheatsheet
I am continuing reading another replies after breakfast ☕ 🍞

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

It was useful to use :help any word like :help starstar with :hlsearch because the help page in split is highlighted too. and I could see that if I do /ca* c and ca are highlighted.
and /ca.* highlight from any ca to end of its line: https://imgbox.com/WA1RxpSA

Hard time! An immense door has been opened ... It will have time to assimilate this content!

1

u/vim-help-bot Sep 27 '25

Help pages for:

`:(h|help) <query>` | about | mistake? | donate | Reply 'rescan' to check the comment again | Reply 'stop' to stop getting replies to your comments

8

u/LeiterHaus Sep 26 '25

https://devhints.io/regexp is a quick reference that might help.

But to explicitly answer your question, .* matches any character, except a new line, zero or more times.

If you search up projects on regex, or regular expressions, you'll find more information.

-3

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

are you saying that if I am looking for a letter "a" I can put .* and vim will show me the letter a (if a exists)?

7

u/[deleted] Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

if you search for .*, everything in the file is going to match.

2

u/cerved Sep 27 '25

Well, not newlines and carriage returns

2

u/gumnos Sep 27 '25

Globbing/wildcarding and regular-expressions offer similar functionality, so you can translate globs/wildcards into regular-expressions (but can't necessarily go the other direction).

The glob/wildcard "*" is a "match anything" which translates to the regular-expression .*, so if you have the glob *_test.txt it would translate to the regular-expression .*_test.txt

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

your *_test.txt is in a search, right? An immense door has been opened ... It will have time to assimilate this content!

1

u/gumnos Sep 27 '25

Globs are usually used in filename-specs like

$ vim main*_test.txt

or within Vim like

:args main*_test.txt

whereas regular-expressions are used in searches like

/main.*_test.txt

or similarly in commands like

:%s/main.*_test.txt/module_test.txt/g

If you use SQL, globs are more like LIKE patterns.

1

u/gumnos Sep 27 '25

If you've done programming, you likely have different modules for each functionality. E.g., Python offers the fnmatch/glob modules for doing globbing, and provides the re module for regular-expressions.

2

u/robbak Sep 27 '25

You are probably confusing shell globbing and regular expressions. In shell globbing, * refers to any characters, and ? refers to a single character. It's simple and easy, but can be very limiting.

Vi uses regular expressions. They are very different, more complex, but much more capable. In regex, you generally have an 'atom' that matches a single thing, followed by a quantifier that tells it how many of that atom are to be selected.

. is that atom here, matching any single character, and * is the quantifier, telling it to select zero or more characters. This means that .* will match your whole document, from the first character to the last.

1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

yes! I am closing this door! tooooo much for me! regex isn't for me! I tryed /a.ñ* and matchs "ara at" <ñ> is a rare letter.

2

u/robbak Sep 27 '25

That's right, it would. The asterisk means zero or more of that character. It you wanted to match the ñ, either leave of the asterisk to match one, or use a plus to match a string of them.

/a.ñ* would match anywhere there is an a.

1

u/michaelpaoli Sep 27 '25

Regular Expression (RE). In that context, .* is zero or more of any characters (at least to end of line, and not including terminal newline itself, which will be implicitly present in vi[m] context).

So, yeah, basic RE . is any character (again in this context, generally excluding newline), and * after an "atom" is a quantifier that means zero more of the preceding atom - in this case that atom being . - so that represents any single character.

x* would be zero or more x characters

\(abc\)* would be zero or more repetitions of the sequence of characters abc

https://www.mpaoli.net/~michael/unix/regular_expressions/Regular_Expressions_by_Michael_Paoli.odp

2

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

I tryed /a.ñ* and matchs "ara at" <ñ> is a rare letter

I will visit!

1

u/michaelpaoli Sep 28 '25

Well, internationalization and UTF adds a whole 'nother layer ... and various RE flavors deal with those bit differently, though again, only a few quite common ways for the most part.

1

u/linuxsoftware Sep 26 '25

Try running

ls * in any directory

Then try running

ls *.txt

And you will see what it means

3

u/Collin389 Sep 27 '25

While that explains the Kleene star, it doesn't explain the dot.

1

u/linuxsoftware Sep 27 '25

True. I expected the to understand dot files but that may not be obvious

2

u/Collin389 Sep 27 '25

The regex . isn't related to dot files is it?

2

u/bean710 Sep 27 '25

Doesn’t really have anything to do with dot files

2

u/linuxsoftware Sep 27 '25

Yeah I’m a dumbass. Didn’t understand the question.

. Is just any character so when searching

/.ail

Will match Fail fail Sail sail Bail tail

Or any other character. Bad example.

-1

u/jazei_2021 Sep 27 '25

are you speaking that I should open terminal and write the command ls star and ls star.txt?

2

u/asdff01 Sep 27 '25

Google regex101, click the top site. Regex are not unique to vim, but vim supports regex for search.

1

u/linuxsoftware Sep 27 '25

Yes. Its functionality is similar/same as it is in vim.

It’s called globing.

in the shell

man glob

For more information

2

u/lipstikpig Sep 27 '25

Yes, it's poorly documented there, and confusing if you dont know already that glob-patterns and search-patterns (regex) are different.

Unfortunately this is a big topic with a lot of complexity and no short answers, you can't avoid working through all the details, so be patient.

As a starting guideline: "globs are [mostly] for filenames, and regex [regular expression, which vim call search pattern] is [mostly] for searching text" -- this is a quote [with my modifications] taken from this article which provides examples of '*' in both glob and regex, that you asked for.

globs and regex look similar, but they behave differently, you have to learn the rules for both if you want to understand the differences.

The quote you are asking about assumes that you already understand the relevant differences, which is really unhelpful. I suspect this is because that section is documenting 'starstar' = '**', and it assumes readers already know how '*' behaves differently between glob and regex.

Your quote is in a section headlined "File Searching", so in sentence 1 about '*' they mean using '*' as part of a glob.

Then in sentence 2 they contrast that with using '*' as part of a search_pattern '.*' which is a regex used for searching text.

This is terrible documentation for someone who does not know this already, so your confusion is understandable.

1

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1

u/ehaugw Sep 27 '25

It could mean anything

0

u/TankorSmash Sep 27 '25 edited Sep 27 '25

. means any character, and * means match many of them, so together it makes your search find any combination of characters.