Re: string compares with 'wildcards' in rpgiv

["Richard B Baird" <rbaird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jerry, Scott, Booth, Jim, Joe, Hans, (did i miss anyone?)

thank you all for your help.

I'm kinda torn on which way to go.  obviously the regex calls will offer
the maximum flexibility, but for what I'm using it for, it might be
overkill - this will be a simple ftp utility that will ultimately be run
and maintained by marginal techies and operator types, so i'd like to keep
the wild card options as simple as possible.  On the other hand, if i want
to simplify the options, i could do that by editing the string input, and
only allowing the more simple features.  that way, the utility isn't
hamstringed from the get-go, and I won't have a major issue training the
users on the intricacies of regex expressions..

I liked the idea of using the QCLSCAN api, but it appears that scanning for
'*Monthly' using '*' as the wild card, is invalid.:

Wildcard character
INPUT;CHAR(1)
A variable that you can specify in the pattern, in positions that should
not be tested when scanning for a match. When this character appears in the
pattern, any character in the data is considered a match. A value of blank
indicates that all characters of the pattern take part in the scan. If the
wildcard character is the first character in the pattern, an error will
occur.

I finished my RPG only version which looks much like what Booth suggested,
and it handles just the three different options:
'*string', 'string*', '*string*'.   it's compact and offers all i need it
to do at this time.  As I said before, i don't want to limit it for future
use, but i'm also under a time constraint, so i don't want to fool around
with different options for too long.

anyway, i'll stew on this for a few hours and make my decision

thanks again,

rick