Date   : Fri, 07 Jul 1989 20:25:15 GMT
From   : voder!pyramid!prls!philabs!linus!nixbur!nixpbe!ugun13!josef@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Search for First in CP/M BDOS

 > Does the "Search for First" function (#17) in the BDOS call
 > accept wildcards as FCB entries?  Should the caller convert
 > *'s to ???'s, or does the BDOS take care of that?

 > IF BDOS accepts '*' , does it accept it even if it is NOT the last character?

From "CP/M Operating System Manual" (Digital Research):

"An ASCII question mark (63 decimal, 3F hexadecimal) in any position
 from f1 [First character of file name] through ex [Extent byte] matches
 the corresponding field of any directory entry on the default or
 auto-selected disk drive
"
So, I think a '*' is not allowed and the caller should have expanded it
to '?'s.

Usually, the '*' is considered the last character of the respective part
(filename and/or extension), so
       a*.ext  is converted to a???????.ext
               as are
       a*ything.ext
       a*******.ext

       a*.b*   is converted to a???????.b??

               Josef Moellers

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