Policy Server Guides › Policy Server Configuration Guide › Attributes and Expressions Reference › Operators › Pattern Matching Operator

Pattern Matching Operator

The pattern matching operator LIKE compares a string value to a pattern of characters that is also a string, for example, 'abc' LIKE '???'. If the string value matches the pattern, the result of the operation is TRUE. Otherwise, the result of the operation is FALSE. The pattern matching operation is case-sensitive.

Patterns are created by combining single characters, character ranges, or both. Character ranges are specified by concatenating the first character in the range, a hyphen, and the last character in the range, for example, 0-9. Valid characters include numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and reserved characters that have special meanings. Character sets contain one or more characters, character ranges, or both and are enclosed by square brackets. For example, [0-9A-Za-z], [0-2ABC], and [789x-z] are all valid character sets.

Note: Character ranges are always part of a character set.

The following table lists the reserved characters and their meanings:

Examples that use '?'

'' LIKE '?'
Result = FALSE

'a' LIKE '?'
Result = TRUE

'ab' LIKE '?'
Result = FALSE

'abc' LIKE '???'
Result = TRUE

'191' LIKE '1??'
Result = TRUE

'201' LIKE '1??'
Result = FALSE

Examples that use '*'

'' LIKE '*'
Result = TRUE

'a' LIKE '*'
Result = TRUE

'a1b2c3' LIKE '*'
Result = TRUE

'robin' LIKE 'r*n'
Result = TRUE

'room' LIKE 'r*n'
Result = FALSE

Examples that use '[set]'

'' LIKE '[abcde]'
Result = FALSE

'f' LIKE '[abcde]'
Result = FALSE

'c' LIKE '[abcde]'
Result = TRUE

'abc' LIKE '[abcde]' Compare: 'abc' LIKE '[abcde]*'
Result = FALSE

Examples that use '[!set]' or '[^set]'

'' LIKE '[!abcde]'
Result = FALSE

'f' LIKE '[^abcde]'
Result = TRUE

'c' LIKE '[!abcde]'
Result = FALSE

'xyz' LIKE '[^abcde]'
Result = FALSE

Examples that use '[set]?'

'' LIKE '[abcde]?'
Result = TRUE

'a' LIKE '[abcde]?'
Result = TRUE

'ab' LIKE '[abcde]?'
Result = FALSE

'z' LIKE '[abcde]?'
Result = FALSE

Examples that use '[set]*'

'' LIKE '[abcde]*'
Result = TRUE

'a' LIKE '[abcde]*'
Result = TRUE

'aabbccddee' LIKE '[abcde]*'
Result = TRUE

'abcdef' LIKE '[abcde]*'
Result = FALSE

'abc' LIKE '[abcde]*' Compare: 'abc' LIKE '[abcde]'
Result = TRUE

Examples that use '\'

'123-456-7890' LIKE '[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]'
Result = TRUE

'_!_^_*_?_' LIKE '_\!_\^_\*_\?_'
Result = TRUE

Examples that test case-sensitivity

'a' LIKE '[a-z]'
Result = TRUE

'A' LIKE '[a-z]'
Result = FALSE

'A' LIKE '[A-Za-z]'
Result = TRUE

'Robin' LIKE '[A-Za-z]*'
Result = TRUE

'Robin' LIKE '[A-Z][a-z]*'
Result = TRUE

'robin' LIKE '[A-Z][a-z]*'
Result = FALSE