> 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

> 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**

If we can have **, then this would imply, incorrectly, ?? for zero or one
words. BUT ?? is meaningful as characters (up to two characters)

Also, is '***foobar':

1.  '(**)(*)foobar' which would match 'fred bertfoobar'
2.  '(*)(**)foobar' which would match 'fredbert foobar' but not the above

And if one, how do you express the other?

I'm sticking by '|' personally.

Rob


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