development suggestion

[Grzegorz Myrda]

I think an option allowing to give not only _exact_ values in item/value
pairing while item(n)query would be useful.
Present possibilities are very powerful but not always "user friendly" ;-)

For example to find an object on the map by its name, user could give only
substring of the "proper" name (from *.dbf) and MapServer would add all
needed special characters (for example  "( |^)" at the begining and
.*( |$)"at the end, and replace all spaces by "( |$)|( |^)").

It can exist as an option in mapfile's query object.
When checked - querying as above, no check - exact querying. Or this
parameter can be set to one of more sophisticated kinds of querying to
support different types of fields and its values and expected results.

Grzegorz