wildcardPattern — Create a pattern matching arbitrary text.
wildcardPattern creates a lazy pattern that matches as few characters as possible, including zero by default, or an exact or inclusive bounded count.
Syntax
pat = wildcardPattern
pat = wildcardPattern(N)
pat = wildcardPattern(minCharacters, maxCharacters)Inputs
| Name | Type | Required | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
N | NumericScalar | Yes | — | Exact nonnegative number of characters to match. |
minCharacters | NumericScalar | Yes | — | Minimum nonnegative number of characters to match. |
maxCharacters | NumericScalar | Yes | — | Maximum nonnegative count, or positive infinity for no upper bound. |
Returns
| Name | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
pat | Any | Host pattern object. |
Errors
| Identifier | When | Message |
|---|---|---|
RunMat:wildcardPattern:ArgumentCount | More than two count arguments are supplied. | wildcardPattern: expected zero, one, or two count arguments |
RunMat:wildcardPattern:InvalidCount | A count is not a host or automatically resident nonnegative numeric integer scalar, or positive infinity in the maximum position. | wildcardPattern: invalid character count |
RunMat:wildcardPattern:InvalidRange | minCharacters exceeds maxCharacters. | wildcardPattern: minCharacters must not exceed maxCharacters |
How wildcardPattern works
- Without a count, the lazy pattern can match zero characters and therefore prefers an empty match when unconstrained.
- Exact and bounded counts accept single, double, and all eight integer classes without routing typed values through floating compatibility storage.
- The bounded form accepts positive infinity as the maximum and stays lazy toward the minimum bound.
Example
Using wildcardPattern with coding agents
Open a RunMat example with live inputs, then ask the agent to explain how wildcardPattern changes the result.
Run a small wildcardPattern example, explain the result, then change one input and compare the output.
Related Strings functions
Pattern
digitsPattern · lettersPattern · pattern · regexpPattern · textBoundary
Text Analytics
addDependencyDetails · addEntityDetails · addLemmaDetails · addPartOfSpeechDetails · addSentenceDetails · addTypeDetails · bagOfNgrams · bagOfWords · cosineSimilarity · doc2sequence · encode · extractFileText · extractHTMLText · fastTextWordEmbedding · findElement · getAttribute · htmlTree · ind2word · isVocabularyWord · normalizeWords · readWordEmbedding · removeLongWords · removeShortWords · removeStopWords · removeWords · stopWords · tokenDetails · tokenizedDocument · trainWordEmbedding · vaderSentimentScores · vec2word · word2ind · word2vec · wordEncoding · writeWordEmbedding
Transform
append · deblank · erase · eraseBetween · erasePunctuation · eraseURLs · extractAfter · extractBefore · extractBetween · insertAfter · insertBefore · join · lower · pad · replace · replaceBetween · reverse · split · splitlines · strcat · strip · strjoin · strjust · strrep · strsplit · strtrim · upper
Core
blanks · char · compose · convertCharsToStrings · convertContainedStringsToChars · convertStringsToChars · genvarname · int2str · isletter · isspace · isStringScalar · isstrprop · mat2str · native2unicode · newline · num2str · sprintf · sscanf · str2double · str2num · strcmp · strcmpi · string · string.empty · strings · strlength · strncmp · strncmpi · strtok · unicode2native
Search
contains · endsWith · matches · startsWith · strfind
Open-source implementation
Unlike proprietary runtimes, every RunMat function is open-source. Read exactly how wildcardPattern is executed, line by line, in Rust.
- View the source for wildcardPattern in Rust on GitHub
- Learn how the RunMat runtime works
- Found a bug? Open an issue with a minimal reproduction.
About RunMat
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