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A wildcard character can be used to substitute for any other character or characters in the search string. Wildcards act as placeholders for missing characters. For example, an asterisk (*) matches any number of characters, including none, and the question mark (?) matches any single character. The term wildcard or 'wild card' was originally used in card games to describe a card that can be assigned any value that its holder desires.
Wildcards that EasyFind understands:
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* : Matches none, one, or multiple characters
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[a-b] : Matches a range of characters
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[a|b|c|…] or [abc…] : Matches a choice of characters
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[^…] : Excludes characters
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? : Matches exactly one character
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Example:
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Demo* : Everything starting with 'Demo' (Prefix)
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*ing : Everything ending with 'ing' (Suffix)
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NS*.h : Everything starting with 'NS' and ending with '.h' (e.g. all Cocoa header files)
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?ouse : All words with five characters and ending with 'ouse' (e.g. 'mouse' or 'house')
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[a-ez]* : Everything starting with 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', or 'z'
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[d-fk-j]*[gh] : Everything starting with 'd', 'e', 'f', 'k', 'i', or 'j', and ending with 'g' or 'h'
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[^be]* : Everything not starting with 'b' or 'e'
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Special handling of words containing hyphens and dots:
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Hyphens: E.g. 'e-mail' is treated like '(email OR "e mail")' and therefore matches e.g. 'email', 'e-mail' or 'e mail'.
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Dots: Characters separated by dots are considered to be abbreviations and therefore handled like words separated by hyphens, e.g. the term 'a.b.c' is equal to '("a b c" OR abc)' and matches 'a b c', 'a.b.c', 'abc', 'a-b-c', etc.
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