Dr Robert Sanderson wrote:
>>> Well, I think that "*" as a term is pretty obviously 'any value'.
>>> That is
>>> identical in semantics to what you wanted, right?
>>
>>
>> * is masking. For some fields masking does not make sense. Year, ranges
>> and such.
>
>
> * matches zero or more characters.
>
> For any field, "*" will match anything, no matter your internal
> representation of the date.

Consider a server that does not support truncation at all. It _will_
have to do a special case in order to full this "new" requirement. But
it will reject all other terms with * in it. That's not elegant.

* is both right&left truncation in some views.

>> case, since obvioulsy * is special and does not _really_ do "full
>> truncation".
>
>
> I don't follow what you mean by 'full truncation' as opposed to what is
> being described.
A full truncation could be one that looks up in a dictionary and find
all words.. then merge all ISAM lists.. A '*' special case might not
look up in a dictionary at all.

> Rob
>
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