Is there a better character than the asterisk to indicate a modified document?

In Windows applications it seems to be a common way to indicate modified, unsaved documents with an asterisk * character.

E.g. this is how Visual Studio .NET 2012 indicates a modified document:

enter image description here

When the document is saved to disk, the asterisk character disappears again. I'm currently using the same method in my own applications, too.

Since I loved how Microsoft replaced the * in password fields by the much clearer • character, I am thinking about something similar for indicating my unsaved documents, too.

Unfortunately, I think the • for indicating "feels" not quite right.

So my questions are:

  • Would you recommend of using something other than the * character to indicate modified documents?
  • If yes, how would you do it (i.e. which character or which other way)?

Update:

As commented by kedar, I've tried the text editor Sublime Text 2 to see how they do it:

enter image description here

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