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Joris3P's avatar
Joris3P
Regular Visitor
4 years ago

Wildcard matching

I need a text comparison function that supports wildcards (both * and ?). Unfortunately this is not supported in Power Query, so I wrote my own function using Text.ToList and List.Generate. In fact I wrote a M language version of wild_match_iter on Wildcard Matching Methods (dogankurt.com)

It works just fine, but the solution with Lists is a complete performance killer.

 

I also made an iterative (non-recursive) version of a solution proposed by Chris Webb, see Chris Webb's BI Blog: Implementing A Basic LIKE/Wildcard Search Function In Power Query Chris Webb's... . Its fast but only supports * (or the % version in SQL Like terms), not ?.

 

So my questions are:

  1. Will wildcard matching be supported by Power Query anytime soon?
  2. Did anyone succeed in  a fast and complete implementation of wildcard matching.
Need Help

1 Reply

  • v-yingjl's avatar
    v-yingjl
    Community Support
    4 years ago

    Hi Joris3P ,

    First thanks for your sharing about your custom fucntion in this thread which would help others who may have the similar issue on the community.

     

    For you questions, as far as I know, currently there seems no current plan about this feature for Power Query in Power BI Desktop, the product team would list the furture plans in this document that you can refer:

    Microsoft Power Platform: 2022 release wave 1 plan 

     

    Also, you can consider submiting the requirement to ideas and add your comments there to make this feature coming sooner: https://ideas.powerbi.com/forums/265200-power-bi-ideas


    It is a place for customers provide feedback about Microsoft Office products . What’s more, if a feedback is high voted there by other customers, it will be promising that Microsoft Product Team will take it into consideration when designing the next version in the future.

     

    Best Regards,
    Community Support Team _ Yingjie Li