You can do the same in VFP but it wouldn't be optimized.

LOCATE FOR LIKE("???14421*", item)

>Sergey - do you remember the old Word Perfect (5.1 - DOS)?
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>The thesarus feature was great for cheating on crossword puzzles! A word could be looked up using wildcards in the character positions that were unknown. For wexample, with the posted key:
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>find ???14421* would list any word with 14421 begining at 4th position. It would also allow searches with a??14421????1. It was more a filter than a seek - but it was great for crossword puzzels!
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