Loop (files & folders) - question mark as wildcard

[T-Rock]

It seems that if I am using a question mark "?" as a wildcard in the file pattern of a "files & folders" loop, it does not match a dot ".".

Example: C:\Temp\1a.00.txt

this does not work:
Loop, Files, C:\Temp\?????.txt, F

this works:
Loop, Files, C:\Temp\??.??.txt, F

Version: 1.1.28.00

[lexikos]

AutoHotkey does not do pattern matching of filenames; it is handled by the OS. This is standard Windows behaviour.

Your understanding of the ? is wrong. It does not match simply any single character. Rather it matches any character except .. If there is no character to match (at end of name, or before a .), then ? will match "nothing" without failure.
Source: batch: question mark wildcard not working with dots - Stack Overflow

(But I haven't found any official documentation to substantiate this.)

You may also find that ??????.txt (six question marks) matches, because the file's short name is something like 1A00~1.TXT.