*
The star ( * ) has two meanings.
1. It is the multiplication operator that is used to find the product for two numbers.
2. When used in regular expressions, it matches zero or more of the character that precedes it. It can follow a regular expression that evaluates to a character.
Example
/bal*/ will match ba, bal, ball, balllllll
/[0-9]*\.[0-9]*/
will match a decimal number. Like 25.9000, .34, 23. For more information on how they participated in this regular expression, see [ ] \ and - .