Wildcard searches broaden searches to retrieve items containing various possible spellings of words.
This type of search increases the number of returns and locates items that might be missed due to how a word is spelled. Wildcard searches let search mechanisms look for patterns with various letters in the place where the wildcard symbol appears.
A wildcard is a character that may be used in a search term to represent one or more other characters. Three characters used by ACTIVE Net are:
The asterisk '*' represents the occurrence of any number of characters (or no character at all). For example:
'c*t' will return a list that includes 'cat', 'caught', 'commencement', 'conflict', 'consent', 'cot', 'cut', etc.
'8*7' will return a list that includes '1817' and '87' because * matches any number of characters - including none.
The question mark '?' represents the occurrence of any one single character. For example:
'c?t' will return a list that includes 'cat', 'cot', and 'cut'.
'8?7' will return a list that includes '1817' and '8a7'.
The percentage sign '%' also represents the occurrence of any one single character (but can only be used to search for customers in ACTIVE Net). For example:
'c%t' will return a list that includes 'cat', 'cot' and 'cut'.