Using wildcards in search terms

Alongside simple characters, it is also possible to specify placeholders for groups of character (so-called wildcards). There are two wildcards.

asterisk	(Default value *) stands for a string of any length including an empty string. If specified more than once in succession then it is interpreted as a single asterisk, e.g. 'ABC**F' is equivalent to 'ABC*F'.
slash	(Default value / ) stands for precisely one character.

If the keyword PATTERN is specified then the wildcards are interpreted and pattern matching takes place. The wildcards are resolved into the shortest possible substring in the search range.

If the keyword PATTERN is not specified then the wildcards are handled as simple constant characters.

Example

@ON & PRINT ’AB*C’	Displays all the lines which contain precisely the string AB*C
@ON & PRINT PATTERN ’AB*C’	Displays all the lines which contain the strings ABC, ABXC, ABCDEFG, ABXXXXXXC etc.

Multiple wildcards may be present in every search term. A search term which consists only of wildcards is also permitted. The @SYMBOLS statement can be used to redefine the wildcards.

No wildcards can be specified within the substitute representation of Unicode characters.