Using an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character in an NCL command
is helpful when the target of a command, particularly a show
command, is not easily identifiable. The asterisk wildcard
represents one or more characters. You can also use a question
mark (?) as a wildcard. This represents a single character, and
can only be used in certain data types, such as simplename.
For Tru64 UNIX, if you use either the asterisk wildcard or the
question mark wildcard in a complete NCL command line entered at
the shell prompt (%), remember to insert the escape character (\)
before the wildcard so that the asterisk or question mark will
not be interpreted by the shell.
The rules for using wildcard characters are as follows:
o Use wildcards only within an entity name (the class name
or the instance name) in an NCL command. Do not use
wildcards within NCL verbs, attributes, or prepositional
phrases. In addition, do not use wildcards in attribute
values unless the use of wildcards is explicitly called
out in the attribute description.
o In all cases, wildcard characters can appear only in the last
class name or last instance value. You cannot use a wildcard
for the global entity node name. All NCL commands that affect
entities include at least two class/instance pairs (the first
being "node node-name" even if it is not specified). For
example:
ncl> show node 0 routing circuit * all status
ncl> show node 0 session control application tp?_appl
ncl> show node 0 session control application ma* all attributes
The first command requests a list of all status information
about all defined circuits. The second command requests a
listing of all applications that begin with tp and end with
_appl and have only one character between tp and _appl. The
third command asks for information about all applications that
start with ma and end with any combination of characters.
o Do not use wildcard characters with NCL control commands.
o If you use wildcard characters with an entity instance name, a
display of all the instances of a class appears.
o NCL supports wildcarding for any directive except create.
o For Tru64 UNIX, using a wildcard to show all subentities when
there are no subentities to be displayed may cause NCL to hang.
To return to the ncl> prompt if this occurs, press <Ctrl/C>.
o For Tru64 UNIX, using a wildcard in the entity class name
results in an operation on the enumerated entities of the
next layer down. For example, the "show node 0 *" command shows
the identities of all module entities on the local system.
o If you use a wildcard in an entity instance name, an operation
occurs on all the instances of a class. For example, show node
0 session control application * shows the identities of all
Session Control Applications.
For Tru64 UNIX, you can wildcard all the local entities on the
local system or a remote system. For example:
ncl> show node .admin.artists *