Ref: 04450002
Title: Wildcard Searches May Fail on Name Service Types
Date: 08/30/90

Copyright 3Com Corporation, 1991.  All rights reserved.

A problem has been discovered that can cause Name Service queries to
return incomplete information.  The problem seems to be present in
both 3+ and 3+Open Name.  It is most likely to be seen with the 3N or
3N2 DIR command, but is related to the Name Service, so will be seen
with any query function (for example, 3DL programs).

The problem occurs with wildcard searches.  During a limited wildcard search,
if the query is supposed to return the first member (in alphabetical order)
of the type being searched for, no selection will be returned.  For example,
suppose a Name Service has the following five servers defined:

        Abbot
        Able
        Adam
        Axle
        Baker

If you do a "3N DIR SERVER *" to this name service, all five names will be
returned.  If you type "3N DIR SERVER A*", no names will be returned,
apparently because the search includes the first member (Abbot) of the type
(servers).  If you type "3N DIR SERVER AD*", "Adam" will be returned, because
the first member (Abbot) is not part of the search.  On the other hand, "3N
DIR SERVER AB*" returns nothing because Abbot should be included in the
result.

A bug report on this problem has been filed at 3Com, but no fix is available
at this date (08/28/90).

For now, you can work around the problem by installing dummy names at the
beginning of each type list.  For example, the network administrator for
the sample network above could add a fake server named "000NUL" to occupy the
first slot in the list, (0 is first in ASCII sort for characters), and
prevent names starting with 1-Z from being excluded by the problem.  The
drawback is that this must be done for all types in each domain (Users,
Servers, Aliases, and so on) to protect all types of 3N searches.
