AIML pattern matching - howto?

Question

I'm having a problem trying to understand how does AIML pattern matching works. What's the difference between _ and *? And how I should use them to get the best match?

I have this document only, but it lacks some good examples.

Answer 1

_ and * are both wildcards, the difference is where they should be used in pattern matching.

_: This should be used before the word or phrase you're matching on. It will match anything even if a pattern of a word or several words could match

*: This should be used after the word or phrase you're matching on. It will match anything unless a pattern of a word or several words are matched.