Wildcards - IGCSE ICT - Paper 2
4In IGCSE ICT, Access Paper 2 tests your skills in using Microsoft Access, where wildcards are useful for creating queries. Here are the essential wildcards you should know:
1. Asterisk (*)
Matches any number of characters.
Example: `*text` matches "context," "subtext," and "pretext."
2. Question Mark (?)
Matches any single character.
Example: `b?g` matches "bag," "big," and "bug."
3. Square Brackets ([ ])
Matches any single character within the brackets.
Example: `[aeiou]` matches any one vowel.
4. Exclamation Mark (!)
Used inside square brackets to exclude characters.
Example: `[!aeiou]` matches any character except vowels.
5. Hyphen (-)
Specifies a range of characters inside square brackets.
Example: `[a-c]` matches "a," "b," or "c."
6. Hash (#)
Matches any single digit (0–9).
Example: `2#` matches numbers like "20," "21," "22," etc.
These wildcards are primarily used in queries for filtering and finding specific data entries based on patterns.