A wildcard character is a keyboard character such as an asterisk (*) or a question mark (?) that you can use for pattern-matching when you search for values.
Wildcards add flexibility to a value search by extending the parameters of a search string. Wildcards can help if you are uncertain of spelling, only know part of a term, or want all available spellings of a word (for example, Imperial versus American words of colour and color).
For this example, there are these values that can be searched using the wildcards in the table that follows: gloss*, gloss?, glossary, Glossary_name, glossy, Glossy_name
To use a wildcard, append the search string with the appropriate wildcard combination.
| Wildcard | Usage |
|---|---|
| Asterisk (*) |
Substitutes for multiple characters in a string. For example, Gloss* locates all strings in the example because they all begin with the characters represented in the string. However, Gloss*_name locates all the strings that begin with "Gloss" but have the string "_name" extension, such as Glossary_name and Glossy_name. |
| Question mark (?) | Substitutes for a single character in a string only. For example, Gloss? might locate the value Glossy or Gloss1 but not Glossary. |
| Backslash and asterisk (\*) | Locates any value that contains a single asterisk character "*" in the string specified. For example, Gloss\* locates the literal value of gloss* only. |
| Backslash and question mark (\?) | Locates any value that contains a single question character as in the string specified. For example, Gloss\? locates the literal value of gloss? only. |