This Search form supports two search methods, Basic and Regular Expressions.
Basic
The Basic method supports two wildcard characters, "?
" and "*
". The "?
" character matches any single character, and "*
" matches any string of characters. The given pattern must match at word boundaries in the associated data field. So, for example, the pattern "wood
" will match a surname of "Wood", but not "Atwood" or "Woodbury". The pattern "wood*
" will match "Wood" or "Woodbury", but not "Atwood". The pattern "*wood*
" will match "Atwood", "Wood", and "Woodbury".
Regular Expressions
Regular Expressions are powerful text matching facilities that use a set of special characters to describe matching rules. By default, text fields on the search form are "contains" filters, so a search for "wood
" will match "Atwood", "Wood", "Woodbury", and more. You can make more restrictive filters by using pattern matching characters. "^
" matches the beginning of the field, so to specify that a surname value must begin with "wood", enter "^wood
". "$
" matches the end of the field, so to specify that a surname value must end with "wood", enter "wood$
".
You can use other pattern matching characters in the name fields.
- A period ("
.
") matches any character, so a search for "mill.t
" matches "Millet" and "Millit". - A plus sign ("
+
") indicates that the last character may occur one or more times, so "mil+et
" matches "Milet" and "Millet". - An asterisk ("
*
") indicates that the last character may occur zero or more times, so "millet*
" matches "Millet" and "Millett". - Brackets indicate alternative characters, so "
mille[nr]
" matches "Millen" and "Miller". - Parentheses indicate alternate terms, so "
(bill|william)
" matches "Bill" and "William".