ASTERISK

About this character

The asterisk (u-002a), popularly called the star, is an ASCII punctuation mark derived from the Greek *asteriskos*, meaning "little star," where ancient scribes used it to mark textual omissions. Its modern primary roles include directing readers to footnotes, signaling birth years or unedited language, and serving as a typographic dinkus between sections. In computing, the asterisk is indispensable as a wildcard in glob patterns and regular expressions, a multiplication operator in many programming languages like Python, and a pointer dereference symbol in C. Its compact shape also functions as a unobtrusive placeholder in graphic design, masking sensitive characters or indicating required form fields.

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