Wild chars *.* allowed in "Disallow" of Robots.txt?

or anything else like *.txt, etc.

[CodeCrunch]

Hi,

I need to disallow all the files in the root directory, but allow the sub-directories. So, is it allowed (and does it work) to write the following in robots.txt file?

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.*

Most of these files are txt. So, alternatively, will the following work also?

User-agent: *
Disallow: /*.txt

Thank you.

[jdMorgan]

CodeCrunch,

Welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]!

Google supports extensions to the Standard for Robots Exclusion, but they are the only ones I know of. See their Wbemaster Help pages for more info.

If possible, re-arrange your directory structure into two branches - one branch for files you want indexed, and another for files you don't want indexed. Then you can exclude robots from entire directories, without relying on a technique that only Google supports.

The Standard was invented in simpler times, and is not very flexible. This should be considered when initially designing your sites.

Jim