MS-DOS and Windows Wildcard Characters
The asterisk (*) and question mark (?) are used as wildcard characters, as they are in MS-DOS and Windows. The asterisk matches any sequence of characters, whereas the question mark matches any single character. In its long form, Dialect 2 uses the {regex} tag with the asterisk or the question mark to specify the wildcard characters. In its short form, Dialect 2 uses the equal sign (=) to indicate that wildcard characters are used. Essentially, "=" turns on the MS-DOS/Windows wildcard character mode. If no equal sign is used, a CONTAINS operator is assumed.
| To Search For | Example | Results |
|---|---|---|
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Documents with any number of characters in the name. |
{prop name=filename} {regex} *.doc {/regex}{/prop} —Or— #filename = *.doc |
Documents with any name and the extension doc. |
|
Documents with any number of characters in the extension. |
{prop name=filename} {regex} readme.* {/regex}{/prop} —Or— #filename = readme.* |
Documents with the name readme and any extension. |
|
Documents with a specified number of characters in the extension. |
{prop name=filename} {regex} readme.??? {/regex}{/prop} —Or— #filename = readme.??? |
Documents with the name readme and any three-character extension. |