Wild Cards
![[Find dialog in Visual FoxPro]](../media/images/foxfind.gif "FoxPro Find dialog")
Visual FoxPro 8 has given us better facilities for searching through code. The Find
dialog in the VFP8 editor has a new tick box labelled 'Use wildcards'. You are
probably already familiar with using the '?' and '*' wild cards to match one character
or many characters but FoxPro 8 now goes further than this.
If you tick the wildcards box then you can still use the familiar '?' and '*'
codes in your search but you are also able to use a few more from the world of regular
expressions. Fox does not implement all the features of regular expressions but the
following selection of codes are still going to be very useful.
Wild Cards
| Wild card |
Matches |
| ? |
any single character except a NewLine. |
| * |
any number of characters - even zero. |
| # |
a single digit. |
| < |
the start of a word. |
| > |
the end of a word. |
| [] |
a group of characters. |
Examples
| Example |
Matches |
| a?e |
'are', 'database', 'A/e',
|
| 8?7 |
'1817', '8a7', and 'B48
7PQ' - remember that a space counts as a character.
|
| a*e |
'Alvechurch', 'database',
and 'Mary had a little lamb' because * matches any
number of characters - including one.
|
| 8*7 |
'SER#83/3471a', '1817', and '87'
because * matches any number of characters - including no characters
at all.
|
| B## |
postcodes from 'B10' to 'B49' but not 'B1'
because the expression specifies two digits and 'B1' has
just a single digit.
|
| <B |
any word starting with 'B' or 'b'.
|
| #> |
any expression ending with a digit.
|
Groups
You can group characters together inside square brackets and search for an
expression matching any one of these characters. A '!' before the group
searches for any expression except one of the grouped characters.
| Example |
Matches |
| [a-m] |
any character between 'a' and 'm' inclusive. |
| [123] |
any character matching '1', '2', or '3'. |
| [a-m].> |
any sentence ending with the letters 'a' to 'm' inclusive. |
| [!a-z].> |
any sentence ending with a non-alphabetical character. |
|
Wild cards make searches more powerful and flexible in Access
Read More
|
Searching a web site with JavaScript
Read More
|
How to set the default search options in a Microsoft Access database
Read More
|
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