Wildcard expressions

RFC 2811: Internet Relay Chat: Client Protocol

2.5 Wildcard expressions


   When wildcards are allowed in a string, it is referred as a "mask".

   For string matching purposes, the protocol allows the use of two
   special characters: '?' (%x3F) to match one and only one character,
   and '*' (%x2A) to match any number of any characters.  These two
   characters can be escaped using the character '\' (%x5C).

   The Augmented BNF syntax for this is:

    mask       =  *( nowild / noesc wildone / noesc wildmany )
    wildone    =  %x3F
    wildmany   =  %x2A
    nowild     =  %x01-29 / %x2B-3E / %x40-FF
                    ; any octet except NUL, "*", "?"
    noesc      =  %x01-5B / %x5D-FF
                    ; any octet except NUL and "\"
    matchone   =  %x01-FF
                    ; matches wildone
    matchmany  =  *matchone
                    ; matches wildmany

   Examples:

   a?c         ; Matches any string of 3 characters in length starting
               with "a" and ending with "c"

   a*c         ; Matches any string of at least 2 characters in length
               starting with "a" and ending with "c"




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2.5 Wildcard expressions

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