Query Tips
Basic · Advanced
Basic - How to perform a simple query
Enter the portion you know of the person's First Name and
Last Name into the respective fields.
Example
If you asked for First Name of James and Last
Name of Hanna, all of the following could be valid
results:
- James Hanna [exact match]
- James Hannay [matches because the letters
H,a,n,n,a are part of the name Hannay]
- Edward James Hannah [matches because the middle
name of James is part of the given name Edward
James, and the letters H,a,n,n,a are part of the
name Hannah]
To match a portion of a name you may not know how to spell,
just use the portion of the name that you know for sure is
spelled correctly.
For instance, if you didn't know how to spell Gilbert,
you could type Gil in the First Name field.
If you don't know a name entirely, for example, you have no
idea what a person's last name may have been, just leave the
field empty.
This will match all names.
Example
If you asked for First Name of Gil and Last
Name left empty, one of the results might be Gilbert
Hannay. Another could be Gillian MacKenzie. Both of
these are valid matches to your request. Gale Hannay,
however, would not match, because the letters G,i,l are
not part of the name Gale.
Advanced -- Using Wildcard Characters in String Comparisons
Built-in pattern matching provides a versatile tool for
making string comparisons. The following table shows the
wildcard characters you can use in any of the text fields you
fill in for your search (note that these will not apply for
numeric fields, such as year)
| Character(s) in pattern |
Matches in expression |
| ? or _ (underscore) |
Any single character |
| % |
Zero or more characters |
| # |
Any single digit (0 — 9) |
| [charlist] |
Any single character in charlist |
| [!charlist] |
Any single character not in charlist |
You can use a group of one or more characters (charlist)
enclosed in brackets ([ ]) to match any single character in expression,
and charlist can include almost any characters, including
digits. You can use the special characters opening bracket ([ ),
question mark (?), number sign (#), and asterisk (*) to match
themselves directly only if enclosed in brackets. You cannot use
the closing bracket ( ]) within a group to match itself, but you
can use it outside a group as an individual character.
In addition to a simple list of characters enclosed in
brackets, charlist can specify a range of characters by
using a hyphen (-) to separate the upper and lower bounds of the
range. For example, using [A-Z] in pattern results in a
match if the corresponding character position in expression
contains any of the uppercase letters in the range A through Z.
You can include multiple ranges within the brackets without
delimiting the ranges. For example, [a-zA-Z0-9] matches any
alphanumeric character.
Other important rules for pattern matching include the
following:
- An exclamation mark (!) at the beginning of charlist
means that a match is made if any character except those in charlist
are found in expression. When used outside brackets,
the exclamation mark matches itself.
- You can use the hyphen (-) either at the beginning (after
an exclamation mark if one is used) or at the end of charlist
to match itself. In any other location, the hyphen
identifies a range of ANSI characters.
- When you specify a range of characters, the characters
must appear in ascending sort order (A-Z or 0-100). [A-Z] is
a valid pattern, but [Z-A] is not.
- The character sequence [ ] is ignored; it is considered to
be a zero-length string (“”).
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