[SamirDarji]

Do you think this piece of code would allow for wildcard searches unless quotes are used? I haven't tried it and have never done any php programming, just some C. Feedback welcome before I starting hacking away...

if ((substr($query, 0, 1)!="*" && substr($query, 0, 1)!="\""))
   {
   $query='*'.$query;
   } 
if ((substr($query, -1)!="*" && (substr($query, -1)!="\"")) 
   {
   $query=$query.'*';
   }