What on earth is *1.* ???

Hi dude :)

Well, that wouldn't be surprising, but that's not the answer, because I finally found out. I'll leave the question open though ;)

Hint : *2.* also messed up, but less. *3.* also mess up a bit, less than the previous one though. Etc ...

In DOS from the beginning, by definition, * "matches 0 or more of any character in the name or extension portion" of the filespec

Also by definition, any character after the * was ignored for that part of the file spec.

So this*.txt was the same as this*andthat.txt   - both would match these:
   this.txt
   this1.txt
and not match:
   that.txt

Nothing after a * matters unles there's an extension.

Yup, and things changed a bit with NT and followers. These are the platforms I'm testing right now. Patterns are now (apparently) accurate, but there's also a «feature» that is messing things up in that particular case(s) I mentioned above... ;)

In Windows 2000 and XP, some efforts have been made to get closer to the UNIX that allows characters after the * to make a difference, but it is not yet right, AFAIK.  
Here's the relevent part of help from a system running Windows 2000 Pro - very notably NOT ruling out the UNIX style middle of the name usage and more notably NOT demonstrating support for it:  

Hope this helps some,
2K
(\o/)

+++++++++++++++++++++++
Using wildcard characters
A wildcard character is a keyboard character such as an asterisk (*) or a question mark (?) that you can use to represent one or more real characters when you are searching for files or folders. Wildcard characters are often used in place of one or more characters when you don't know what the real character is or you don't want to type the entire name.

Asterisk (*)
You can use the asterisk as a substitute for zero or more characters. If you're looking for a file that you know starts with gloss but you can't remember the rest of the file name, type the following:

gloss*

The Find dialog box will locate all files of any file type that begin with gloss including Glossary.txt, Glossary.doc, and Glossy.doc. To narrow the search to a specific type of file, type:

gloss*.doc
In this case, the Find dialog box will find all files that begin with gloss but have the file extension .doc, such as Glossary.doc and Glossy.doc.

Question Mark (?)
You can use the question mark as a substitute for a single character in a name. For example, if you typed gloss?.doc, the Find dialog box would locate the file Glossy.doc or Gloss1.doc but not Glossary.doc.

Bingo K_2K ! :)

Brian, good idea, but beware that findstr crashes (yes, crash) on regexps longer than 80 chars (on my W2K at least)

If I had to create a regex longer than 80 chars... I might commit hari-kari...

but I guess classes can get pretty long without shorthands...

-Brian

>> If I had to create a regex longer than 80 chars... I might commit hari-kari...

LOL ;)

Out for a movie. See ya all.

But that's only telling it what to display, not what to look for.  You are correcting it's mal adjustedness buy doing a separate validation on the results using findstr only on the one field it displays.

   Documents and Settings
will most certainly be included in one of these two lists (some upgrades moved the folder and then renamed it, resulting in the short name being the second match for the first 6 letters) although the only character allowed is NOT in that name:
   dir /b C:\*1
   dir /b C:\*2

Enjoy,
2K
(\o/)

It gets better !  

From winguides.com: (and true be default on my 2000 system)
++++++++++++
Windows evaluates file extensions on the first three characters, therefore 'filename.html' is actually treated as 'filename.htm'. Therefore if you use a command such as 'del *.htm' to delete all the '.htm' files, you will also delete all '.html' files as well. This functionality can be disabled by modifying the registry.

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem]
Name: Win95TruncatedExtensions
Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Value: (0 = disable , 1 = enable)
+++++++++++

LOL,  the very name of the key suggests an option that should no longer be supported,  yet "enabled" remains to be the default.

Sadly, nothing in that registry key suggests possibility to ignore short names.
Name: NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation
could be turned on to stop making more short names, but that does not look like it should change the
way Windows evaluates the existing ones.

>>Therefore if you use a command such as 'del *.htm'
>>to delete all the '.htm' files, you will also delete all '.html' files as well

aaaaaaggggggghhhhhhh.....How have I not ever noticed this?

But that's ok, because it's just as easy to type this:

    for /f %a in ('dir /b *.htm ^|findstr /r ".htm\>"') do del %a

instead of this

    del *.htm

...don't you think?

-Brian

oh yes, Brian, it MUST be easier, because that's what M¢ expects us to do.  
Far be it from US to expect THEM to implement having longer extensions AND implement using them at the same time.  
How DARE us be so pushy?