Using Wildcards

With wildcard operators, you can search for words with variable characters. You can position wildcard operators at the beginning, middle, or end of a query word, and you can combine them within a word (e.g., ?ffect*).

Note: Search stemming is disabled for a query term when you use a wildcard at the beginning or in the middle of the term.

Matching a Single Character

You can use the single character wildcard--the question mark--to represent a single variable character in a query.

Syntax:

string?
str??ing
???string

Examples:

medic???
1?4
R??2

The first query will search for terms like medicine, medicate, etc.

The second query will search for terms like 114, 144, etc.

The third query will search for terms like R2D2, etc.

Matching One or Zero Characters

The optional character wildcard--the dollar sign--is similar to the single character wildcard, but it represents one or zero variable characters.

Syntax:

string$
str$$ing
$$$string

Examples:

colo$r
V$TOL
electron$$$

The first query will search for terms like color, colour, etc.

The second query will search for terms like VTOL, VSTOL, etc.

The third query will search for terms like electron, electrons, electronic, electronics, etc.

Matching a Character String

The string wildcard--the asterisk--represents a variable string of zero or more characters in a query. The string wildcard is equivalent to an infinite series of adjacent optional character wildcards.

Syntax:

string*
string1*string2
*string

Examples:

medic*
m*n
*ane
1*5

The first query will search for terms like medic, medics, medical, medicine, medicate, medically, medication, etc.

The second query will search for terms like man, men, mean, moon, melon, moron, maroon, Manhattan, manifestation, etc.

The third query will search for terms like bane, lane, crane, plane, profane, insane, membrane, etc.

The fourth query will search for terms like 15, 175, 1995, etc.

Note: A query consisting of only the string wildcard operator will return a Hitlist comprising all records in a database; the records will have identical relevance ranking scores.

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