The filter consists of a string of standard characters interleaved with wild card characters in a way which will be quite familiar to
users of DOS and UNIX.
The components of a filter are:-
Standard Characters. The characters in a Word must match exactly any corresponding
Standard Characters in the Filter.
The ? wild card. A ? character at any position in the Filter
will match any character in the corresponding position in the Word.
The * wild card. A * character at any position in the Filter
will match any number of characters in the Word, including zero characters.
The [ABC...XYZ] wild card. A set of square brackets surrounding a string of standard characters will match the corresponding character
in Word if that character is included in the string of standard characters. The string of standard characters can include the - character
to denote a run of consecutive characters. eg. A-G is equivalent to ABCDEFG.
A few examples may help to clarify these rules:-
T?E will match the words THE, TOE etc.
T*E will match the words THE, TOE, TIME, TROUBLE etc.
A[CL]E will match the words ACE and ALE, but not AGE etc.
*[A-RT-Z] will match any word not ending with S
*ABLE will match any words which end with ABLE.
*CEI* will match any word containing the sub-string CEI.
*C?E[LNP]? will match the words CREPE, ACCENT, ACCEPT, ANCIENT, NICKELS etc.
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