Pattern: Match anything
“Match anything” is one of the patterns that you can select on the Match panel. This pattern allows a field to match any text, except perhaps for certain characters that may occur in the next field. The repetition settings for the field determine how many characters the field can or must match.
Match Anything Except
Usually, when people say that a field can match "anything", the field doesn't truly allow everything. The exact contents are unspecified, but the field does stand in relation to the text around it.
- Characters allowed by the next field: Do not allow any of the characters that may appear in the next field.
- First character of the next field: Do not allow any of the characters that may occur at the start of the next field.
- Unescaped first character of the next field: Do not allow any of the characters that may occur at the start of the next field, except when those characters are preceded by a specific escape character.
- Text matched by the next field: Do not allow this field to match any text that can be matched by the next field, while still allowing the field to match characters that may appear in the next field.
- Nothing: Really allow any character. This may yield inefficient regular expressions, particularly if you have two fields that allow anything with unlimited repetition.
Character to Escape Delimiters
If you set "what kind of anything" to "anything including an escaped delimiter", specify the character to be used to escape the delimiter characters that occur within the field itself.
Can Span Across Lines
Turn on to allow this field to match more than one line of text.
Turn off to require this field's match to stay within one line.
Examples