Masking

You use masking when you want to display all records with names that share common characters. You can include masking characters anywhere in a search string.

Some commands accept a generic mask. The mask can contain one or more asterisks, one or more question marks, or both all in any position in the mask.

An asterisk matches any number of characters, including zero characters. A question mark matches only a single nonblank character.

The following table provides examples of masks, and shows data strings that would qualify as matches and not matching for each:

Mask	Strings that match	Strings that do not match
*	Everything	Nothing
ABC*	ABC ABCC ABCXYZ	AB ABXC
*ABC	ABC AABC XYZABC	ABCD
AB?	ABC ABD	ABCD AB
A*B	AB AXXB	ABC
ABC	ABC ABCD XABC XABCD	ABXC
A??B	AXXB ABBB	AB ABB
ABC	ABC AABBCC	ACB AC

Wildcard characters can be in any position, including the first. Know that having the first character a wildcard can slow down the first display. The entire file is sometimes read before the display starts.

In general, the longer the initial string of characters that are not wildcards, the faster the initial display is. In other words, ABC* usually displays faster than A*.