You can perform a case-insensitive search by simply entering a text string of one or more words (this works fine for most people) or you can use a regular expression. The Dog, Sire, and Dam Registered Name fields all support regular expressions. The most common components of a regular expression are:

^ and $

The ^ and $ characters can be used to match the start and end of a line. For example, ^$ matches an empty line (nothing between the start and end) and ^ABC$ matches a value composed of "ABC" only.

. (period)

The period matches a single character. So ^...$ would match a value with only 3 characters (no more and no less).

* (star)

The star character matches zero or more of the preceding. So .* matches zero or more occurance of any character. For example, ^A.*bob$ would match any value starting with an upper case "A" and finishing with "bob".

? (question mark)

The question mark matches zero or ONE of the preceding characters.

+ (plus)

The plus character matches ONE or more of the preceding characters.

[abcd]

Matches a single character from a list included in the square-brackets. You can also specify a range, like [0-9], [A-Za-z], or [Aa] (upper or lower case "A"). For example, ^A.*[Bb]ob$ would match any value starting with an upper case "A" and finishing with "bob" or "Bob".

(|)

And finally, the parenthesis with a vertical bar are used as an "OR". For example, ^(Abbe|Abe).*$ would match any value starting with Abbe or Abe. This could also have been written as ^Abb?e.$ or ^Ab+e.*$.