Wilcard Help

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The Basics

When you run a FlashStats report, you need to specify which requests you want FlashStats to count. This is done by specifying the path of requests to include; requests that don't match the specified path will be ignored. If you want to include only certain paths then you can use certain "wildcard" characters to easily specify different request paths.

The wildcards supported are a useful subset of "regular expressions." The most commonly used wildcards are "*" and "?".

The wildcard characters will be interpreted as wildcards if the "Use wildcards" checkbox on the Report Request Form is checked. If the checkbox is not checked then the wildcard characters will be interpreted literally, and therefore only paths exactly matching what you specify in Path To Analyze will be included in the report.

The "*" and "?" Wildcards

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Use "?" to match any single character, and use "*" to match any zero or more characters.

Here are some examples of using the "*" and "?" wildcards:

• If you specify /products/*/info.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/info.htm will match
  • /products/maxcharge/info.htm will match
  • /products/info.htm will not match
  • /products//info.htm will match (but isn't likely to occur)
  
  
• If you specify /products/flashstats/report-?.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/report-1.htm will match
  • /products/flashstats/report-2.htm will match
  • /products/flashstats/report-10.htm will not match
  
  

As a related item, please note that the Report Request Form includes two additional choices: "Match only this URL exactly" and "Match all URLs starting with this text." The latter is the default choice, and when it is chosen FlashStats will automatically append a "*" to the end of whatever path you specify in the Path To Analyze field. This system makes it easy to analyze just one subdirectory: simply specify the directory name and leave the "Match all URLs" radio button selected.

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The "|" Wildcard

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Use the "|" wildcard (along with some parenthesis) to specify several different valid alternatives. (This is a logical "OR" condition.)

Here is an example of using the "|" wildcard:

• If you specify /products/(flashstats|maxcharge)/info.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/info.htm will match
  • /products/maxcharge/info.htm will match
  • /products/other/info.htm will not match
  
  

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The "[a-z]" Wildcard

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Use the "[a-z]" wildcard to specify a precise set of acceptable characters to match. Provide a list of characters to match; ASCII character ranges can be specified using the notation "a-z". ("[a-z]" is the same as "[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz]".)

FlashStats will attempt to match exactly one character from the set of characters specified.

Finally, if the first character provided is ~ then the entire set of characters is treated as character not to match.

Here are some examples of using the "[a-z]" wildcard:

• If you specify /products/[a-k]*/info.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/info.htm will match
  • /products/maxcharge/info.htm will not match
  
  
• If you specify /products/[abcdefg]*/info.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/info.htm will match
  • /products/maxcharge/info.htm will not match
  
  
• If you specify /products/[a-z]*/info.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/info.htm will match
  • /products/maxcharge/info.htm will match
  
  
• If you specify /products/[a-z]/info.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/info.htm will not match
  • /products/maxcharge/info.htm will not match
  
  
• If you specify /products/[~a-k]*/info.htm in Path To Analyze:
  • /products/flashstats/info.htm will not match
  • /products/maxcharge/info.htm will match
  
  

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