# Does AQL support regular expressions in comparison operators?

**URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/does-aql-support-regular-expressions-in-comparison-operators/6993
**Category:** AQL
**Tags:** aql, cdr
**Created:** [17 July 2025 16:21 UTC](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/does-aql-support-regular-expressions-in-comparison-operators/6993 "2025-07-17T16:21:42Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![emmanuel.eschmann](https://discourse.openehr.org/user_avatar/discourse.openehr.org/emmanuel.eschmann/32/3339_2.png) [@emmanuel.eschmann](https://discourse.openehr.org/u/emmanuel.eschmann)
#### Post date: [17 July 2025 16:21 UTC](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/does-aql-support-regular-expressions-in-comparison-operators/6993/1 "2025-07-17T16:21:42Z")

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The possible support of regular expressions for the ‘matches’ AQL comparison operator was discussed in the 2019 Discourse Topic ‘AQL spec review for stabilization, formalization and cleanup’ ([AQL spec review for stabilization, formalization and cleanup](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/aql-spec-review-for-stabilization-formalization-and-cleanup/131)). However, no decision was taken in this topic.

This was 6 years ago. What is the current status?:

- Are their plans to extend the AQL ‘matches’ comparison operator with support for regex?
- Is support for regex already included in selected CDRs?

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### Author: ![pablo](https://discourse.openehr.org/user_avatar/discourse.openehr.org/pablo/32/3505_2.png) [@pablo](https://discourse.openehr.org/u/pablo)
#### Post date: [17 July 2025 23:07 UTC](https://discourse.openehr.org/t/does-aql-support-regular-expressions-in-comparison-operators/6993/2 "2025-07-17T23:07:46Z")

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I remember that discussion 🙂

I raised the issue, and there were some implementations, for instance I think EHRBASE added LIKE, but spec-wise I don’t thing we made progress / agreement on that area.