Special String Matching

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Characters

There are 5 special characters in Special String Matching:

Character	Meaning	Example	Matches
%	Any amount of any characters including no characters at all.	Pre%	Any string starting with Pre followed by anything or nothing at all: "Pre", "Preceded"
_	Exactly one of any character.	Pre_	Any string containing Pre followed by exactly one of any character: "Pred"
-	Negation.	-food	Any string that isn't "food".
,	Multiple criteria separator. Multiple rules can be added together using commas. Each must match individually for the whole pattern to match.	-%food%,%foo%	Any string that contains "foo", but not "food".
^	Escape character. The next special character should be used literally.	^%	Match the actual character % exactly.

All other characters are matched case insensitively so "a" is the same as "A".

Examples

Pattern	Possible Matches (not necessarily all)	Does NOT Match
abc	abc	xyz
abc%	abc abcd abc123	1abc bacba abbc
%abc	abc 123abc aabc	abc1 bacba abbc
%abc%	abc 123abc abc123 i like this abc stuff	abbc ab123c
abc_	abcd abc!	abdc abcde abc
_abc	1abc 2abc habc	abc abcd 11abc
^%	%	a
^_	_	b
^,	,	c
%abc%,-%abcd%	abc abce	abcd bce

If you wish to use OR logic, simply add multiple rows to the appropriate table. So for example if you want to match something containing "dog" OR "cat" then you need two separate rules leading to the same thing:

%dog%

%cat%