Syntax search: Using placeholders (wildcards)

Modified on Mon, 13 Oct at 5:12 PM

Placeholders (wildcards)

Placeholders, known as wildcards in the IT language, are placeholders which allow you to search for words that begin with the same characters but end differently.

To search for words with the same root (e.g. America, American; tree, trees), please use the stem search option. This will show the hits more quickly. A simple stem search is already used as the default for your keywords. In many cases, it is therefore not necessary to use placeholders.

Note: Use placeholders sparingly, as they significantly increase the time needed for the search and for the hits list to appear.

When using placeholders, one of the following rules must be adhered to:

A placeholder that does not appear at the beginning of a word must be preceded by at least two letters or digits.
A placeholder that does not appear at the end of a word must be followed by at least two letters or digits.
A word must have at least two letters for a placeholder to be allowed at the beginning or end of the word.
Within phrases, a placeholder can also stand for an entire word.

Search operator	Meaning
* (asterisk)	Placeholder for any number of characters or no characters: Mo*d Searches for all words that begin with “mo”, end with “d” and have any number of characters or no other characters in between (e.g. Mohammed, Mohammad, mobbed, mobilised).
! (exclamation point)	Placeholder for exactly one character: M*ller Searches for all words that begin with “m”, end with “ller” and have exactly one other character in between (e.g. Miller, Möller, mueller). Mueller and Moeller are also found, as the umlauts ü and ö are formed by two letters (ue and oe).
: (colon)	Stands for no search character or a single arbitrary search character, i.e. there may or may not be a character at this position. STEIN: Searches for all words beginning with STEIN. Possible hits are STEINS, STEINKIRK. ST!M: Finds the following words, among others: STEM, STAMP, STOMPING

To prevent the search from taking an extremely long time or even being cancelled, please note the following points:

Do not use more than ten keywords with placeholders per search.
Do not place placeholders at the beginning of keywords. The further forward you place the placeholder in the keyword, the longer the search will take.

Search	Result
Britain	Articles containing words with the root “Britain” are found. The following words are found and highlighted in the article: Britain, britain, Britainism.
German*	Articles containing “German” are found. Articles containing a word beginning with “German” are found. The following words, among others, are found and highlighted in the article: German, german, Germans, Germania, Germany, German-wide. Note: Keywords with a placeholder at the end must contain at least two (preferably more) characters before it.
*elly	Articles containing “elly” are found. Articles containing a word ending with “elly” are found. The following words are found and highlighted in the article: elly, Connelly, jelly, Shelly, sowbelly. Note: Keywords with a placeholder at the beginning must also contain at least two characters. More than 10 keywords with placeholders within a search are not permitted.
Ha*burg	Articles are found that contain words beginning with “Ha” and ending with “burg”, with any number of characters or no characters in between. The following are found and highlighted in the article: Hamburg, Hapsburg, Harrisburg, Hainburg, Hagenburg.
Baic	Articles are found that contain words beginning with “Ba”, containing the string “ic” and containing any number of characters or no characters before and after the string “ic”. The following are found and highlighted in the article: Baltic, basic, basics, basically, barbaric, Balearic, Bagnatica.
“Rogny * * Écluses”	Articles are found in which the word “Rogny” appears at the beginning of a phrase, the word “Écluses” appears at the end, and two other words appear in between. The following are found and highlighted in the article: Rogny-les-Sept-Écluses, Rogny Les Sept Écluses.

Searches with a placeholder that result in too many possible keywords (e.g. sh*, ha*) should not be performed.