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dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine Programmer's Reference
Wildcards (* and ?)

A ? in a word matches any single character (including a Unicode character), and a * matches any number of characters.

The wildcard characters can be in any position in a word. For example: 

appl* would match apple, application, etc. 

*cipl* would match principle, participle, etc. 

appl? would match apply and apple but not apples. 

ap*ed would match applied, approved, etc. 

Use of the * wildcard character near the beginning of a word will slow searches somewhat. 

Another wildcard, the = wildcard in dtSearch Desktop, matches any digit (0-9). For example, === would match any three-digit number. This wildcard is disabled in the dtSearch Engine by default. To enable it, set Options.MatchDigitChar option setting to the character that you want to use as the wildcard.