Distinct in the Advanced Sort/Search form will only return a single occurrence of rows which
have duplication in the fields. Two wild cards may be placed in the search string(s) for
the 'LIKE' operator;
- Percent '%' - All characters, ex. 'c%t' will return 'cat', and 'coat'.
- Underscore '_' - Single character, ex. 'c_t' will return 'cat', and 'cot'.
Otherwise search string(s) based on the 'LIKE' operator use an exact character match.
The normal search interface automatically inserts a leading and trailing percent '%'
character using the 'LIKE' operator.
Many wild card type characters may be placed in the search string(s) for the 'REGEXP' operator.
It is beyond the scope of this basic information frame to give a detailed account of pattern
matching with this option, but some common metacharacters are given below
- '+' - Match one or more occurrences of the preceding character.
- '*' - Match zero or more occurrences of the preceding character.
- '?' - Match zero or one occurrences of the preceding character.
- '.' - Match any character.
- '^' - Match the beginning of the string.
- '$' - Match the end of the string.
- '\s' - Match a single white space character, including tabs and newline characters.
- '\S' - Match everything that is not a white space character.
- '\d' - Match numbers from 0 to 9.
- '\w' - Match letters, numbers, and underscores.
- '\W' - Match anything that does not match with \w.
- '[...]' - Matches any item in list. ex. [ab] matches either a 'a' or 'b'.
- '[^...]' - Matches any character except those items in the list.
Many wild card type characters may be placed in the search string(s) for the 'POSTFIX' operator.
It is beyond the scope of this basic information frame to give a detailed account of pattern
matching with this option, but some common metacharacters are given below
- '~' - Match regular expression, case sensitive.
- '~*' - Match regular expression, case insensitive.
- '!~' - Does not match regular expression, case sensitive.
- '!~*' - Does not match regular expression, case insensitive.
- '.' - Match any character.
- '+' - Match one or more occurrences of the preceding character.
- '*' - Match zero or more occurrences of the preceding character.
- '?' - Match zero or one occurrences of the preceding character.
- '^' - Match the beginning of the string.
- '$' - Match the end of the string.
- '\' - Matches escape sequence. ex \t matches tab character.
- '\s' - Match a single white space character.
- '\S' - Match ^space character.
- '\d' - Match numbers from 0 to 9.
- '\D' - Match numbers ^ from 0 to 9.
- '\m' - Matches only at begin of word.
- '\M' - Matches only at end of word.
- '\y' - Matches only at the beginning or end of word.
- '\Y' - Matches only at a point that is not beginning or end or word.
- '\Z' - Matches only at the end of word.
- '[...]' - Matches any item in list. ex. [ab] matches either a 'a' or 'b'.
The operators AND and OR are based on the Intersection and Union respectively with
a given search. The below example illustrate the difference between the typical boolean
aspects of the these operators.
Given two search results:
- A: {0.00, 11.0, 13.0, 22.00, 22.60, 34.23, 44.35}
- B: {22.6, 34.23, 44.35, 100.00}
A AND B = {22.60, 34.23, 44.35}
A OR B = {0.00, 11.00, 13.00, 22.00, 22.60, 34.35, 44.35, 100.00}