Matching via use of the question mark "?"

[Charles Johnson]

I read where the 'question mark' in a JQL statement is intended to match a single character.  I also read where fuzzy matches are supposed to match the whole supplied phrase/word .

In Jira Cloud.. this JQL returns WAY more records than it should, despite there being no record that looks anything like it (as a whole).

Summary ~ "20??purplemonkeydishwasher"

True.. we do have records that have the numbers '20' in their summary... but unless someone snuck in 'purplemonkeydishwasher' into 8,000+ Summary fields.. the returned results seem a bit 'ambitious'.

I'm really just trying to match Summaries with a Year value in them (example "[2018]" and "[2019]" (with the square braces).  I was hoping to avoid typing out the whole year (by using the "??") .. so i wouldn't have to come back every year and add another value to the JQL statement. 

Anyone else experience this behavior, or am i just completely off-base with my assumptions on how this JQL should work?

[Thomas Magny-Garcia]

Hi @Charles Johnson 
As I understand the documentation (and its application),

You can search for multiple character wildcard searches using * at the end of a word.

I guess the character wildcard may only be used at the end of a word. That's why your "purplemonkeydishwasher" is not managed...
Moreover,

Unsupported term searches:

• A single character search ( ? ) will automatically convert to a wildcard search ( * ) at the end of the term.

So is "?" useful? I don't know...
Maybe you may try

 summary~ "20*" and summary~"purplemonkeydishwasher"

To find your issues...

Hope it helps !