Use wildcard in LDAP search with filter and filter args fails

Question

Hi,
I'm writing a function that receives the search filter and the filter arguments and returns the attributes of the found entries but I'm having problems when I pass the wildcard '*' as argument. For example I'm looking for cn=* but instead it looks for cn=\2a (searches for cn containing *).
I'm using the InitialLdapContext function:
public NamingEnumeration<SearchResult> search(String name,
String filterExpr,
Object[] filterArgs,
SearchControls cons)
throws NamingException
The problem occurs in the class com.sun.jndi.toolkit.dir.SearchFilter format method where it replaces the filter place holders with the filter arguments. There it calls getEncodedStringRep to the arguments and that function returns the wildcard '*' escaped.
Is it supposed to behave like that? I don't have problems using the search function search(String name, String filterExpr,Object[] filterArgs, SearchControls cons) but I'd like to be able to separate the filter and the filter arguments.

Answer 1

That's a forum artefact, as the boldface should make obvious.
My point is that you should specify the wildcard in the filter string, not as an argument. See http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/javax/naming/directory/DirContext.html#search(javax.naming.Name,%20java.lang.String, java.lang.Object[],%20javax.naming.directory.SearchControls). (The forum will break that link too.) The argument asterisk is being escaped in accordance with what it says there. Or maybe you can escape it yourself as an argument as \0x2a.