Wild card question

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1

Hi,
Does the wild card “?” represent one character or “none or one” character?
For example, if I say AN? does it represent both “AN” and “AND”

thank you,

2

Wildcards are symbols that enable you to replace zero or multiple characters in a string. These can be quite useful when dealing with dynamically-changing attributes in a selector.

  • Asterisk (*) – replaces zero or more characters
  • Question mark (?) – replaces a single character
  • Asterisk AND Question mark (*?) - matches an attribute value with at least one character

Reference: Studio - Selectors With Wildcards

1 Like
3

AN? will match AND and not AN.

4

@A_Learner,

? represent one character!

5

It’s not! Because when you put question mark (?) at the end of the “AN” it expects one more character. So it validates 3 characters that starts with “AN”. But you can use asterisk(*) for this.

6

But I check on "https://regex101.com/ ". It showed a match for AN.
?

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7

Hi @A_Learner,

Different systems can have somewhat different working and different notations wrt wildcards.

For e.g in SQL, wildcards are % and _

But in UiPath, we have * and ? Where * represents zero or more characters and ? Represents only 1 character.

Below post also talks about a certain regex working in online reflex but not in UiPath, different platforms can respond differently based on underlying technology.

If you want to build a regex for UiPath and test it, I would suggest using regex builder:

Hope this helps.

Regards
Sonali

2 Likes
8

Please see below, UiPath RegEx builder is also matching AN meaning ? is “zero or one”.

The image shows a RegEx Builder tool with a test text "AN", a regular expression "AN(D)?" set to match exactly one occurrence, and the "IgnoreCase" option checked. (Captioned by AI)
The image shows a RegEx Builder tool with a test text "AN", a regular expression "AN(D)?" set to match exactly one occurrence, and the "IgnoreCase" option checked. (Captioned by AI)1181×734 13.1 KB

Thank you,

9

Hi @A_Learner,

Where do you want to use this wildcard? in selector? Wherever you want to make use of this, try using the expression(AN? or AN*) there to identify the difference in behavior.

Regards
Sonali

10

I am trying to match a pattern. Like I mentioned I am trying to match a pattern that has a D or no D in after “AN”. If I put a * it will match any character. I do not want that. That is why I am using AN(D)?

thanks,

11

Hi,

WildCard and Regex are different specification. In wildcard, ? means any single character. However, in regex, ? means 0 or 1 times for the previous character(or block).

If you want to use regex selector, the following document will help you.

FYI, the following is example of Wildcard and regex selector.

Wildcard

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image550×450 18.2 KB

Regex

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image550×450 19.9 KB

Regards,

1 Like
12

For a regex match, is this correct to say [M|B]AT to match “MAT” or “BAT”?

Thank you,

13

If you need to match both MAT and BAT, regex pattern will be [MB]AT or (M|B)AT

Regards,

1 Like
14

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