~ (tilde)

Type

Wild Card (Sound Pattern) Symbol

Purpose

The ~ wild card character is used to find data that "sounds like" a specified text string. The ~ symbol can be used before any number of characters or words; it locates all the records that have a similar sound to the specified string. In making comparisons with the ~, DataEase matches the consonant pattern; vowels and spaces between words are ignored. Consonants with similar sounds (such as f and ph) are treated as the same character. The ~ symbol can be used in any logical comparison or record selection context and may be used in a text string after another wild card symbol (* or ? ).

Example

for MEMBERS with LAST NAME = "~Read" ;

list records

LAST NAME in order ;

FIRST NAME .

end

This script tells DataEase: list the records for members whose last name sounds like Read. The report output for this script, arranged in alphabetical order by LAST NAME, might look as follows: