A metacharacter is a printable character that has special meaning to a computer program other than as a literal character, e.g., as a wildcard or control code. RootsMagic uses the following metacharacters in the Sidebar Index tab and People List search boxes. In the examples below, the square brackets [something] denote that their contents are the search term to be entered.

• A single comma denotes the separation between Surname and Given names search terms.

Examples:

[searchterm1] (no comma) searches Surname only.

[,searchterm2] searches Given only

[searchterm1,searchterm2] searches Surname for a match on searchterm1 and then for a match on searchterm2 in Givens.

• The percent sign % wildcard matches any sequence of zero or more characters.

Example: [Be%t] will return surname results Bennet, Bentley, Cuthbertson, Fauberget. Note that simply entering plain text is equivalent to entering [%text%]

• The double quote " metacharacter as the first character forces a literal match (no wildcard interpretation) to the search term from the beginning of the surname; wildcards remain effective in the Givens search term (an exact search of Givens is available in People Search). .

Examples:

[John] will match any Surname with John anywhere in it (Johnson, Littlejohn, etc.).

["John] will match Surnames that start with John, e.g., Johnson.

["John,] will find everyone whose Surname is only John.

["smith,% Mary] will find only Smiths having an additional Given name beginning with Mary.

• The underscore _ wildcard matches any single character.

Example: [SM_TH,] will return results for SMITH and SMYTH

 

* Thanks to Tom H. for this writeup.