You can indicate partial matches of character string data in a conditional clause in an .if statement and in the where clause of a query by using special wild card characters with the comparison operators. The character string data must be delimited by single quotes (except when used in a QUEL query).

When used in a string within an .if condition, the special meaning of wild card characters can be disabled by preceding them with a backslash (\) character. Report-Writer then interprets the wild card character literally. Thus, \* refers to the asterisk character. When used outside of an .if condition, wild card characters have no special meaning and are always interpreted literally.

You can use the following wild card characters within a conditional clause in an .if statement for the purpose of comparing character string data:

Any of these special characters can be used alone or in combination to specify partial match criteria:

You cannot use blanks in bracketed expressions such as "[A‑J]*" or "[N-Z]???".

When a string appears within the where clause of a .query statement, the wild card conventions must follow those of the database query language you are using to retrieve the data.