Hi. Is there any wild card symbol (such as *) for letters (or
numbers)? Example: I don't recall the spelling of a foreign name, or
want to know the number of entries for first names with 3 letters and
last name Garcia. "*** garcia" does not work. How does one do that?

Hi there,

The only wild card symbol you can use for Google searches is for whole
words.

Example:
"Return * * Jedi"

would find sites that contain:

Return of the Jedi
Return within the Jedi
Return negative feedback Jedi

In your case, a search for "* Garcia" will work (but expect a lot of
results).

That's it for Google.

AltaVista has a * wildcard that covers individual characters. So a
search for "bed*" will find:

bedlam
bedding
bedazzled

AltaVista say:

"The asterisk is a wildcard; any letters can take the place of the
asterisk. Bass* would find documents with bass, basset and bassinet.
You must type at least three letters before the *.
You can also place the * in the middle of a word. This is useful when
you're unsure about spelling.
Colo*r would find documents that contain color and colour."
http://au.altavista.com/help/adv_search/syntax


Best wishes,
robertskelton-ga

Traditionally, the ? symbol is used as a single character wildcard,
not on Google, but in DOS and in many other typical applications of
wildcards.

- Entropyx