[RFE] Add the Ability to use Wildcard Characters when using the Search Function in the UI

[DavidResende0]

Currently, you can't use wildcard characters in the search bar which can make searching for groups of similar items difficult.

For example, there's currently no way to search for only the first two entries in this list of vms without all four of these vms appearing in the search results.

Adding the wildcard characters would let you search for any single character (b?rd would return bird, bard, etc.), any number of characters (charact* would return character, characterization, characters, etc.), or ~ which lets you include the other wildcard characters in your search (Hello~? would return Hello?)

[DavidResende0]

cc @GilbertCherrie, @jeffibm, @Fryguy

[Fryguy]

? And * are good and are fairly standard. Where does the ~ syntax come from?

[DavidResende0]

? And * are good and are fairly standard. Where does the ~ syntax come from?

I was reading a bit about them and saw that ~ is sometimes used to show that you're trying to specifically search for the ? or * character as opposed to using them as a wildcard character.

[Fryguy]

Interesting - can you share a link to where you saw that? Only asking because usually I've seen \ as an escape character, but had never seen ~

[DavidResende0]

Interesting - can you share a link to where you saw that? Only asking because usually I've seen \ as an escape character, but had never seen ~

So I looked into it some more and you're right, I think \ is used more often but Microsoft Access (https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/office/examples-of-wildcard-characters-939e153f-bd30-47e4-a763-61897c87b3f4) and Apple (https://support.apple.com/en-ca/guide/functions/ffa4268b2bb0/web) seem to use ~.

Don't think it matters too much either way, so we can just stick to \.