Wildcards and Regular Expressions
Introduction
Universal Controller supports the use of wildcards and regular expressions in the user interface and remote interfaces.
For files, wildcards and regular expressions can be used only in:
- Source file specifications, not destination file specifications. (Under some operating systems, it is possible for * and ? to be valid characters in a file name. If they appear in a destination file, they are treated as file characters, not as wildcards or regular expressions.)
- File name portion of file specifications, not as part of the directory.
Wildcards
Universal Controller supports two wildcards:
- Asterisk (*)
- Question mark (?)
You can use wildcards in record searches and when applying some rule or command against records. Fields that support wildcards are identified in their field description.
Wildcard | Meaning |
---|---|
Asterisk (*) | Represents a wildcard of any number of characters. |
Question mark (?) | Represents a wildcard of one character in a specific position. |
Multiple questions marks | Represent wildcards of multiple characters in a specific position. |
File Name Examples
File Names
test.txt
test1.txt
test2.txt
test3.txt
test.bin
test1.bin
test2.bin
test3.bin
Wildcard Matches
*
,*.*
,test*.*
, andtes?**.
will match all of the files.*.txt
will match files 1 - 4.*.bin
will match files 5 - 8.test?.txt
will match files 2 - 4.
Regular Expressions
Important!
POSIX Extended Regular Expression syntax is used for file name matching and string matching.
Note
You can use regular expressions only on Windows and UNIX operating systems; you cannot use them on z/OS.
File Name Examples
File Names
test.txt
test1.txt
test2.txt
test3.txt
test.bin
test1.bin
test2.bin
test3.bin
Regular Expression Matches
.+
,tes.+
, andte.+[tn]$
will match all of the files..+txt$
will match files 1 - 4..+bin$
will match files 5 - 8.te..[123].+bin$
will match files 6 - 8.
String Examples
C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.[D](20)[1-9][1-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9][.][T][0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9][0-5][0-9].* | Matches C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.D20171001.T235159.* |
C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.[D][1-9][1-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9][.][T][0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9][0-5][0-9].* | Matches C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.D171001.T235159.* |
C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.[D](20)[1-9][1-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9][.][T][0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9][0-5][0-9].* | Fails C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.D2017201033.T235159.* month 20 day 33! |
C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.[D][1-9][1-9][0-1][0-9][0-3][0-9][.][T][0-2][0-9][0-5][0-9][0-5][0-9].* | Fails C:\UDM\TEST\OUT\LinuxSystem.D171001.T266159.* hour 26 minutes 61! |