Pattern matching strings

The following table describes the pattern matching strings that can be used to search for values in any Control-M application except Application Plug-ins and Control-M MFT.

If you use special characters, such as asterisk, as a literal part of the object name (for example, glo*-job1_started), and when you filter you want to include only these objects (for example, you do not want to include glo-job1_started), specify \ before the special character in the filter prefix (for example, glo\*). Otherwise, objects without the special character (for example, glo-job1_started) will also be included. (Wherever possible, try to avoid defining object names with special characters as literals.)

Symbol

Name

Description

*

Asterisk

Defines any number of characters (including no characters). This can be inserted in place of a string or in the middle of the pattern-matching string in the place of any number of characters.

If one or more of the filter criteria fields is not needed, it is more efficient to leave the field blank than to use the "*" character. However, at least one filter field must contain a value.

? or .

Question Mark or Period

Defines any single character. This can be inserted in place of each character.

!

Exclamation

Defines all possibilities that do not match the pattern that immediately follows the ! character. This can be specified to exclude the pattern immediately following the ! from the result.

Where a pattern begins with !, the escape character backslash “\“ can be used to escape the ! and either include or exclude the pattern (required only where ! is the first character). For example, to include occurrences of “!wip”, use the pattern “\!wip”, whereas “!\!wip” excludes “!wip”.

! must be the first character of the string,

EXAMPLE:

In the expression (first!,!one) the exclamation is part of the string “first!”, but is used to exclude the string “one”.

! is evaluated literally in collection and filter definition fields.

[ ]

Brackets

Defines different possibilities for a single character. The brackets enclose a string of possible values. In addition, the following symbols can be used within the brackets:

  • - defines a range of characters.
  • ^ used as the first character in the brackets to denote "not".

, or |

Comma or Pipe

Used to separate pattern-matching strings, enabling the user to specify more than one string (the comma represents a Boolean OR).

EXAMPLE:

(host01,host02,host03)

“,” is evaluated literally in collection and filter definition fields.

character

Character

Any character, other than one of the above, denotes the specific character.

In case-sensitive fields, Control-M differentiates between uppercase and lowercase characters.

EXAMPLE:

“a” and “A” are regarded as two different characters.

^

Anchor (start)
  • Denotes "not" when used as the first character in brackets [ ].
  • Denotes the start of a word when not specified in brackets [ ].

$

Anchor (end)
  • Denotes the end of a word.

\specialchar

Escape character

Defines the literal value of the special character. The special characters are the symbols described in this table.

  • To specify \, type \\.
  • If you specify \. then "." has the meaning of period and not the same meaning as ?.
  • Use "\" to escape ! only where ! is the first character.

+

Plus

Used with \ to denote the literal value of the special character.

EXAMPLE:

<CYCLIC_INTERVAL_SEQUENCE FROM="\+60M\,\+3H" TO="+30M,+6H" />

Parent Topic

Tools