# Using WIldcard Caharacter in Kdb

**URL:** <https://forum.kx.com/t/using-wildcard-caharacter-in-kdb/9528>\
**Category:** Community Support\
**Tags:** kdb-and-q\
**Created:** [February 26, 2015, 1:29pm UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/using-wildcard-caharacter-in-kdb/9528 "2015-02-26T13:29:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![A\_L\_V](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f4b2a3/32.png) [@A\_L\_V](https://forum.kx.com/u/A_L_V)\
**Post date:** [February 26, 2015, 1:29pm UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/using-wildcard-caharacter-in-kdb/9528/1 "2015-02-26T13:29:00Z")

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Say I want to retrieve all price data for times starting with 1420\* (e.g. time=1418234533892319745).

I (unsuccessfully) tried:

select price from Table where time=`14201% select price from Table where time=`14201\*  
select price from Table where time=14201%  
select price from Table where time=14201\*

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![manni\_patel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/958977/32.png) [@manni\_patel](https://forum.kx.com/u/manni_patel)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2015, 10:03am UTC](https://forum.kx.com/t/using-wildcard-caharacter-in-kdb/9528/2 "2015-02-28T10:03:00Z")

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see other thread.

select price from Table where string[time] like “14201\*”

although why would you want to do this? You can construct a far more  
efficient query by using numbers/within:

select price from Table where time within  
(1420100000000000000;1420199999999999999)