The . . . . . . . . in a pattern represents zero or more characters.

The correct answer is B. *.

The asterisk (*) is a wildcard character that can represent zero or more characters. It is used in regular expressions to match any character or sequence of characters. For example, the regular expression *a will match any string that starts with the letter a and has any number of characters after it.

The other options are incorrect. The question mark (?) represents a single character, the number sign (#) represents a single character of any type, and the double asterisk (**) represents any number of characters.