SWEEP TIP: WILDCARDS .............................................. Rick Ryall

     Many programs require you to type in the name of a file at some point
during their operation, and many of them allow you to use wildcards to save a
good deal of typing time.  PIP, D (the alphabetized directory program), DIR
(the built-in CP/M directory program), and NSWEEP are a few examples of these
types of programs.  This article will explain how to use wildcards in general
and how to apply them to the use of NSWEEP.

     First of all, what is a wildcard?  It is a character that represents all
other characters, just like a wildcard in poker can be any card that the
player chooses it to be.  Wildcards can be used when you wish to perform an
operation or set of operations on many similar files.

     The CP/M operating system that comes with all Kaypro models less than or
equal to 10 recognizes two wildcard characters, "?" and "*".  The question
mark is a wildcard in exactly the same sense that a one-eyed jack is a wild
card: it represents a single character in a single position, but it can be any
one of the characters available.  Thus, the filename BOGGLE.?AS would match
BOGGLE.PAS, BOGGLE.BAS, and BOGGLE.(any character here)AS.  Simple.

     The asterisk character is a wildcard in a different sense, though: it can
represent more than one character.  You can roughly translate the asterisk in
a filename as "and any other characters that follow", making it a shorthand
form of the question mark wildcard.  In other words, you can do anything with
a series of question marks that you can do with an asterisk, but with less
convenience.  Additionally, the asterisk wildcard applies only to the field
that it is in, meaning either the name (the part before the period) or the
extent (the part after the period).  Let's do some examples to clear this up a
bit, using NSWEEP as the example program since it has several options that
allow you to use wildcards, including Find file, Log disk (which we discussed
two issues ago), Rename file (which we may discuss next time), and Wildcard
tag.

     We will assume that you have pressed the W key (which stands for wildcard
tag) and have received the following prompt:  Tag what?

YOU TYPE       WHAT HAPPENS

W*.BAS         All the files beginning with W and ending with .BAS are tagged.

W???????.BAS   Does the same thing that W*.BAS does.

*.BAK          All the files ending in .BAK are tagged, which is useful for
               erasing WordStar backup files.

WS.COM         Tags the file WS.COM only, since there were no wildcards in the
               name.

*.*            EVERYTHING is tagged.  Useful when copying or erasing entire
               disks.

????????.???   Does the same thing that *.* does.  You can see that the
               asterisk is more convenient in this case.

LETTER.*       Tags all files beginning with LETTER and ending with anything.

LETTER.???     Does the same thing that LETTER.* does.