1. Documentation
  2. / Rules
  3. / Exclusion rules

Using wildcards

Supported wildcards

Matches:
* Any number of characters (zero or more).
? Any one character.
# Any one digit from 0 through 9.
[characters] Any one of the characters in the list or range specified here.
[!characters] Any one character not included in the list or range of characters specified here.

Matching characters in a list

To match characters in a list, enclose the characters between square brackets with no spaces or other delimiters between characters (unless you want the space character to be part of the list).

[1, 2, 3, A, B, C] represents the characters 1, comma, space, 2, 3, A, B, and C. The redundant occurrences of the space and comma are ignored.

[123ABC] represents the characters 1, 2, 3, A, B, and C (with no space or comma character).

Matching characters in a range

To match characters in a range, separate the lower and upper bounds with a hyphen, as in [1-5]. Always specify the range in ascending sort order (A-Z rather than Z-A).

When you specify multiple ranges, you don’t have to separate them with anything.

[1-5A-C] contains the ranges 1-5 and uppercase A-C.
A range specified in ascending order will produce a valid pattern string.

Matching special characters

To match one of these characters, include it in a characters list:

Be sure to place the hyphen at the beginning of the list; if you’re using the [!characters] format, the hyphen immediately follows the exclamation point, as in [!-123]. The other characters can appear anywhere in the characters list.

[-?A-Z] matches the hyphen, the question mark, and any uppercase letter from A through Z.

To match one of these characters, place the character anywhere within your wildcard specification except in a characters list or range:

!,[1-6] matches the exclamation point, the comma, and any digit from 1 through 6.