Cart masks are used to identify carts (audio files) that might be grouped together. A cart mask must be exactly 4 (four) characters in length. Mask entry dialogs will not allow entries that are too short and will not accept more than 4 characters entered.
The "?" (question mark) or the "*" (asterisk) characters are "wildcards", meaning a letter or number is valid in its position in the mask. The "?" and "*" characters can be used interchangeably as they have the same meaning in cart mask evaluation. A third wildcard that can be used is the "#" (pound sign) character. When used in a cart mask, only numbers (0 through 9) are valid in its position in the mask. These are the only wildcard characters allowed for a cart mask - all other characters will be interpreted literally.
Valid characters for a cart mask, besides the "?" (question mark), "*" (asterisk) and "#" (pound sign) include the letters A .. Z, the numbers 0 .. 9 and the characters "{", "}" and "!" (exclamation).
A valid cart mask will include one or more "?", "*", or "#" characters (although it doesn't have to) and other letters or numbers that match up with cart types that you wish to have grouped together. Examples of valid cart mask include:
Mask |
Result |
C??? |
Carts beginning with the letter "C" and any 2nd, 3rd and 4th character will be included. |
PR?? |
Carts with the first two characters of "PR" and any 3rd and 4th character will be included. |
?R?? |
Carts with any first character, a second character of "R" and any 3rd and 4th characters will be included. |
Z?A? |
Carts with a first character of "Z", any 2nd character, a third character of "A" and any 4th character will be included. |
VT## |
Carts with the first two characters of "VT" and a number in the 3rd and 4th characters will be included. |
C*** |
Carts beginning with the letter "C" and any 2nd, 3rd and 4th character will be included. |
C??# |
Carts beginning with the letter "C", containing any character in the 2nd and 3rd positions, and a number (0 through 9) in the 4th position will be included. |
#### |
Only carts with a number (0 through 9) in each character position will be included. |
|
A cart mask of "????" or "****" is the same as saying "any cart number is valid" and should not be used, as all carts would match such a mask. |
Combining a number of cart masks for use in a cart category will group all carts that meet at least one of the cart masks. For instance, you could have a filter called "R Carts" that has 4 cart masks - "R???", "?R??", "??R?" and "???R". The result of using this cart filter would be that every cart in the inventory that has the letter "R" in any character position (1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th) would be a match.
