~~Title: Wild ~~
<pageheader/>

The **Wild** object allows a script to access the in-built pattern matching functions in Opus. Even though most ActiveX scripting languages have their own pattern matching support (usually via a regular expression system of some sort), you may wish to use the one that Opus provides for consistency with internal Opus functions.

You can create a **Wild** object using the **[[fsutil|FSUtil]].NewWild** method. To use the **Wild** object, you must first give it the pattern to match against (this step is called "parsing the pattern"). You can do this when it is created or later on using the **Parse** method. Once the object has a pattern you can call the **Match** method to test a string against the pattern.


<commandtable columns="3" id="cmdtable_1">
$$ Property Name
$$ Return Type
$$ Description
$$ (#)//<default value>//
$$ //string//
$$ Returns the current pattern in the Wild object
</commandtable>


<commandtable columns="4" id="cmdtable_2">
$$ Method Name
$$ **Arguments**
$$ Return Type
$$ Description
$$ EscapeString
$$ <string:input>\\
<string:type>
$$ //string//
$$ Escapes all wildcard characters in the input string and returns the result. For example, "**the * 'dog' said** *" would be conterted to "**the '* %%''%%dog%%''%% said '***".

The optional type argument lets you specify the conversion:\\
//none//: Escape characters used in [[..:..:wildcard_reference:pattern_matching_syntax|standard pattern matching]]\\
**r**: Escape characters used in [[..:..:wildcard_reference:regular_expression_syntax|regular expressions]] \\
**b**: Double all back-slashes\\
**n**: Double all back-slashes that come before the letter '**n**'\\
Note that these modes cannot be combined.
$$ Match
$$ <string:test>
$$ //bool//
$$ Compares the specified string against the previously-parsed pattern, and returns **True** if it matches.
$$ Parse
$$ <string:pattern>\\
<string:flags>
$$ //bool//
$$ Parses the supplied pattern. The flags string is optional - if supplied it must be a string consisting of one or more of the following characters:

**c** - case-sensitive (otherwise pattern matching is not case-sensitive) \\
**d** - DOS only (only standard MS-DOS wildcards are supported)\\
**f** - filename mode (special handling for matching filenames)\\
**r** - regular expression (otherwise [[..:..:wildcard_reference:pattern_matching_syntax|standard pattern matching]] is used) 
</commandtable>