News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

July 11, 2007

tips

Dictionary grabs the wildcard spot

Posted Jul. 11, ’07, 9:03 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Tips

Dictionary wildcardYu no how much I lurv teh diktionary appilcation; now its eeven beter!

Wow, I don’t think I could keep that up for more than a sentence. But I digress. One Mac OS X Hints reader has suggested that the Dictionary app (not the Dashboard widget, mind you) sort of supports wildcard searching. If you input a question mark (or an asterisk) instead of a letter, it’ll give you alternatives that match that pattern. The downsides? You can’t use more than one wildcard in a word, and it only substitutes for one character.

Dictionary pattern searching is incredibly useful—especially when you’re stuck on a tricky crossword—and it’d be cool to see that implemented. But I agree with OS X Hints proprietor Rob “A to Z” Griffiths: given the way this works, it’s not certain if it’s a feature or a really helpful bug.


1 Comments

Dimitri said:

Now if I could use regex in my dictionary queries, **then** I'd have a killer app for "them pesky crosswords". ;)

July 11, 2007 1:29 PM

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