Steve Jones - SSC Editor (11/30/2013)
I still don't agree with you. I asked:"which of the following wildcard characters"
To me that implies that [] is a wildcard set of characters. I think asked
"can match a single character"
Meaning, can I use one or more of the wildcards to match a single character.
Well, the natural answer to that is that you can't use [] to match any character. [a] can match something, can, and [cde] can, and so on, but none of those were on your list; so presumably we have to rule out & and {} because they aren't sets of wildcards, so why don't we have to rule out [a] and and [cde] and so on for the same reason? There seem to be several apparently good reasons to interpret your words as meaning something you didn't intend (and you certainly fooled me).
Most people understood. Perhaps we're all wrong, but I fail to see how the question isn't clear unless you are trying to read the letters without realizing the spirit.
I'm not saying that you and the people that understood you straight away are wrong, and I don't think Ray Herring was saying that either - in fact I think you are being silly when you interpret his post that way. However, think about some of the people who post on this site and clearly struggle with English; someone struggling with a foreign language will often take a literal meaning of the words even when it's immediately obvious to a native speaker that the words are not intended to have that precise meaning. What I want to say is that you perhaps ought to take more care not to make difficulties for people who already have a problem because English is foreign to them. I'm lucky, I don't have a problem, I don't struggle, but I still misunderstood because I took your words literally.
Tom