PMDF System Manager's Guide

Patterns can contain wildcard characters. In particular, the usual OpenVMS wildcard characters are allowed: an asterisk, *, will match zero or more characters and each percent sign, %, will match a single character. Asterisks, percent signs, spaces, and tabs can be quoted by preceeding them with a dollar sign, $. Quoting an asterisk or percent sign robs it of any special meaning. Spaces and tabs must be quoted to prevent them from ending prematurely a pattern or template. Literal dollar sign characters should be doubled, $$, the first dollar sign quoting the second one. Additional wildcards available in patterns are listed in Table 5-1.

Table 5-1 Mapping Pattern Wildcards

Wildcard	Description
%	Match exactly one character
*	Match zero or more characters, with maximal or "greedy" left-to-right matching
Back match	Description
$ n*	Match the nth wildcard or glob
Modifiers	Description
$_	Use minimal or "lazy" left-to-right matching
$@	Turn off "saving" of the succeeding wildcard or glob
$^	Turn on "saving" of the succeeding wildcard or glob; this is the default
Glob
wildcard	Description
$A%	Match one alphabetic character, A--Z or a--z
$A*	Match zero or more alphabetic characters, A--Z or a--z
$B%	Match one binary digit (0 or 1)
$B*	Match zero or more binary digits (0 or 1)
$D%	Match one decimal digit 0--9
$D*	Match zero or more decimal digits 0--9
$H%	Match one hexadecimal digit 0--9 or A--F
$H*	Match zero or more hexadecimal digits 0--9 or A--F
$O%	Match one octal digit 0--7
$O*	Match zero or more octal digits 0--7
$S%	Match one symbol set character, i.e., 0--9, A--Z, a--z, _, $
$S*	Match zero or more symbol set characters, i.e., 0--9, A--Z, a--z, _, $
$T%	Match one tab or vertical tab or space character
$T*	Match zero or more tab or vertical tab or space characters
$X%	A synonym for $H%
$X*	A synonym for $H*
$[ c]%	Match character c
$[ c]*	Match arbitrary occurrences of character c
$[ c 1 c 2 ... c n ]%	Match exactly one occurrence of character c 1 , c 2 , or c n
$[ c 1 c 2 ... c n ]*	Match arbitrary occurrences of any characters c 1 , c 2 , or c n
$[ c 1 -c n ]%	Match any one character in the range c 1 to c n
$[ c 1 -c n ]*	Match arbitrary occurrences of characters in the range c 1 to c n
$< IPv4>	Match an IPv4 address, ignoring bits
$( IPv4)	Match an IPv4 address, keeping prefix bits
${ IPv6}	Match an IPv6 address

Within globs, i.e., within a $[...] construct, the backslash character, (\), is the quote character. To represent a literal hyphen, -, or right bracket, ], within a glob the hyphen or right bracket must be quoted with a backslash.

All other characters in a pattern just represent and match themselves. In particular, single and double quote characters as well as parentheses have no special meaning in either mapping patterns or templates; they are just ordinary characters. This makes it easy to write entries that correspond to illegal addresses or partial addresses.

Note that to specify multiple modifiers, or to specify modifiers and a back match, the syntax uses just one dollar character. For instance, to back match the initial wild card, without saving the back match itself, one would use $@0, not $@$0.

Note that the PMDF TEST/MATCH (OpenVMS) or pmdf test -match (UNIX) utility can be used to test mapping patterns and specifically to test wildcard behavior in patterns.

5.3.1.1 The $_ modifier: minimal vs. maximal Matching

The $_ modifier causes wildcard matching to be minimized, where the least possible match is considered the match, working from left to right across the pattern. For instance, when the string a/b/c is compared to the pattern $_*/$_*, the left $_* will match a and the right $_* will match b/c.

5.3.1.2 IP Matching

$(123.45.67.0/24)

will match anything in the 123.45.67.0 subnet.

With IPv4 "ignore bits" matching, an IP address or subnet is specified, optionally followed by a slash and the number of bits to ignore when checking for a match. For instance,

$<123.45.67.0/8>

will match anything in the 123.45.67.0 subnet. Or another example is that

$<123.45.67.4/2>

will match anything in the range 123.45.67.4--123.45.67.7.

IPv6 matching matches an IPv6 address or subnet.