The asterisk is a
symbol.
*
While easily
typed by holding the
shift key and pressing
8, the * is also found above the
numeric keypad as it represents
multiplication in
mathematics. It can also be called up by holding the
alt key and pressing
0042. (key locations are based on a standard
qwerty keyboard)
Another use for the * is as a meta character in search strings. While the question mark (?) is generally the meta character to replace a single unknown character, the asterisk is used to replace an unknown number of characters, including none.
eg. If I had a searchable database of the dictionary, and I was unsure if bookkeeper had one or two k's, I could do a search for "book*eeper". Also, if I wanted to know all words that began with the letters book, I could enter the string "book*"