C.2.2.2.4 Wild Card Matching
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##### C.2.2.2.4 Wild Card Matching

If the Attribute is not a date, time, signed long, signed short, unsigned short, unsigned long, floating point single, floating point double, other byte string, other word string, unknown, Attribute tag, decimal string, integer string, age string or UID and the value specified in the request contains any occurrence of an "*" or a "?", then "*" shall match any sequence of characters (including a zero length value) and "?" shall match any single character. This matching is case sensitive, except for Attributes with an PN Value Representation (e.g., Patient Name (0010,0010)).

For Attributes with a PN value representation, including the case of extended negotiation of fuzzy semantic matching, wild card matching is implementation dependent and shall be specified in the conformance statement.

### Note

1. Wild card matching on a value of "*" is equivalent to universal matching.

2. The wild card matching method specified by DICOM might not be supported by some non-DICOM multi-byte character text processors.

3. For multi-component group names, the component group delimiter "=" (3DH) may be present in the Key Attribute value, but may give unexpected results if the SCP does not support matching on separate components but interprets the entire value literally. E.g., "*=*" or "*=*=*" may or may not return all strings, and hence is not equivalent to "*", nor to universal matching.

4. Using attributes with VR of AE, LO, PN and SH as matching keys will not allow single value matching on values that contain characters "*" and "?" - such queries will always be treated as queries with wildcard matching.

5. Attributes with VR of ST, LT and UT are intended for conveying narrative text and may contain wildcard characters "*" and "?". Attempts to match on a string explicitly containing "*" or "?" will be treated as wildcard matching and thus may return multiple results rather than a single one.

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