ls * V*
ls "* V*"
ls '* V*'
ls *[ ]V*

Actually, it did do the match as requested; the trick is that what it found wasn’t actually a flat-file. On my box, it’s actually a symbolic link to a directory. So what it’s actually showing is the contents of that directory.

You can see this if you start with this:

# ls -ld /sys/class/net/wl*

ens4 lo wlp0s26f7u2


But this filter DOESN’T return wlp0s26f7u2, as expected:

$  ls /sys/class/net/wl*

addr_assign_type  carrier             dev_id    duplex             ifindex    name_assign_type  phys_port_id    proto_down  subsystem     wireless
addr_len          carrier_changes     dev_port  flags              iflink     netdev_group      phys_port_name  queues      tx_queue_len
address           carrier_down_count  device    gro_flush_timeout  link_mode  operstate         phys_switch_id  speed       type
broadcast         carrier_up_count    dormant   ifalias            mtu        phy80211          power           statistics  uevent

What am I doing wrong?

thanks

@ks

Here, a character means alphanumeric characters or all valid filename characters. It also matches no character(nothing).