Pattern Masking › CA TLMS Pattern Masking Feature › Pattern Characters

Pattern Characters

The following special characters can be used as wild cards in the definition of a pattern:

Question mark (?) X'6F'

This character is used to match any character, or the absence of a character in the object. It cannot match a node character.

Exclamation mark (!) X'5A'

This character is used to match any character, but not the absence of a character in the object. It cannot match a node character.

Pound or hash sign (#) X'7B'

This character is used to match a numeric value in the object. It cannot match the absence of a character.

At sign (@) X'7C'

This character is used to match an alphabetic character in the object. It cannot match the absence of a character.

Asterisk (*) X'5C'

This character is used to match any number of characters (including zero) within a node. It cannot match the node character.

Dash (-) X'60'

This character is used to represent any number of characters (including zero) before and after its position in the pattern. It can match the node character.

Back slash (\) X'E0'

This character is used to specify that the character immediately following it is to be taken literally; that is, \* would indicate that the asterisk is to be matched as an asterisk, and not used as a wild card character. A back slash is not valid at the end of a pattern unless it is preceded by a back slash (\\).

Node character

This character is used to define a node separator. Typically, this character is a period, as used in a data set name.