So we have two suggestions:
(1) vertical bar: "|" ; and
(2) double asterisk: "**"
The advantage I see to ** is that it means one less in our repertoire of
special characters. Is there really a possible ambiguity of ** with the use
of * to mask characters? That is, any possible ambiguity that isn't solved by
the escaping detailed at
http://www.loc.gov/z3950/agency/proposals/masking.html
So for example:
a left-truncation search on "*xyz" would be *\*xyz.
A word search on "*xyz" would be **\*xyz**
A word, left-truncated search on "xyz" would be ***xyz**
However, I'm happy with | too.
Any other opinions?
Robert Sanderson wrote:
> > I would suggest to use ** to mask out words.
>
> That could be confused with two * wildcards. Which isn't very meaningful,
> but I suggest using a completely different character.
>
> Rob
|