Referring to wildcard characters in mv operation

Question

This is my bash code:

mv ./foo*foo2*foo3*.foo3 ./foo*.foo3

How can I refer to the second wildcard character from ./foo*foo2*foo3*.foo3 when renaming my file using the mv command?

I'm sorry if this sounds stupid, but I couldn't find an answer anywhere. Maybe I'm using incorrect terminology? If so, please let me know.

Answer 1

The rename tool is just for that:

sh$ touch fooAfoo2Bfoo3C.foo3
sh$ rename -v 's|foo.*foo2(.*)foo3.*\.foo3|foo$1.foo3|' *.foo3
#                         ^^^^                ^^
#                     capture the           insert
#                   second "wildcard"  --->  here
fooAfoo2Bfoo3C.foo3 renamed as fooB.foo3