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 *