Handling a 'wildcard' character in C++

Question

I need a function to identify a pattern string within another string while taking into consideration a wildcard character _

For instance, if the given pattern is f__h, then it should match up to the string catfish.

So essentially, the underscore needs to be able to represent any alphabetical character, but I can't think of a way to go about this. Anyone got some ideas on how to do this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

With new standard C++11 you can use regex. Otherwise use boost regex.

Answer 2

What's wrong with:

std::search(
    text.begin(), text.end(),
    pattern.begin(), pattern.end(),
    []( char fromText, char fromPattern ) {
        return fromPattern == '_' || fromPattern == fromText;
    } )

If the function returns text.end(), there was no match. Otherwise, it returns an iterator to the first character of the match.