This code can compare a string to a wildcard, such as "a*c" which would match "abc" or "abbbbbc" or "afiefaififeanfnc" but not "aaa". It can also match "a?c" to "abc" or "a7c" but not "azzc".
I'm fairly certain that most programmers out there are familiar with Regular Expressions (herein known as regex), and for the most part, regex seems to be pretty consistent in different computer languages.