Wildcard usage

You can use a “wildcard” character or characters with letters or numbers to indicate you want to find records that begin with, end with, or contain those letters/numbers. The Reconciliation module applications use standard wildcard rules.

The following table describes the four wildcard characters available. The wildcard operator is available only for the LIKE operator.

Table 1. Wildcard characters
Character Description Usage
* asterisk Stands for any number of characters (zero, one, or multiple) in the specified position.
% percent sign Stands for any number of characters (zero, one, or multiple) in the specified position.
_ underscore Stands for a single character in the specified position.
? question mark Stands for a single character in the specified position.

Examples

Table 2. Examples of wildcard characters
Enter... to find
123* or 123% records that start with 123, such as 123, 12345, 123ABC, etc.
*123 or %123 records that end in 123, such as 123, 5123, or PUMP123.
*123* or %123% records that contain 123, such as 123, 1234, PUMP123, or XX12300Valve.
Elec* or Elec% records that contain words that start with “Elec,” such as electric, electromagnetic, or electrode.
123? or 123_ any four-character records that start with 123, such as 1234, 1230, 123g, etc.
_18 or ?18 any three-character records that end with 18, such as 418 or J18.

Do not put a space between the wildcard character and the other characters.

If the specified value contains no wildcard characters, it is compared as %X%. For example, %3% returns all records with the number three anywhere in the string.

To look for the *, %, _, or ? as characters without using them as wildcard characters, duplicate the character. For example, DAY_ _THREE finds the match DAY_THREE value but not DAY12THREE.



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