My search through bugs with "wildcard" didn't show a hit for this. I'm running Win10. It works fine with Exiftool version 9.40, but fails with 11.23, 12.21, and 12.35 (those are the only ones I tested with).
This works fine, regardless of level:
exiftool outba*.jpg
It shows:
19:24:33 2021-11-12 Fri z:\comics\failblog>exiftool outba*.jpg
ExifTool Version Number : 12.35
File Name : Outback.jpg
Directory : .
<snip rest>
This fails to find the file starting somewhere above 9.40:
exiftool z:outba*.jpg
I copied the file to the root of z: to see if it found it there, but it's not making that mistake.
Thanks for this report. I'll look into it as soon as I get a chance.
- Phil
I have reproduced this, and it will be fixed in ExifTool 12.36.
Until then, older versions will all work if you add a slash (either forward or backward) after the drive designator, ie)
exiftool z:/outba*.jpg
or
exiftool z:\outba*.jpg
Thanks again for this report.
- Phil