Wildcard Search "lazy search" and "greedy search"

Are you talking about inside a document search? Or filename search? If inside a document, get an editor that supports regular expression search. For free editors, some of the Scintilla based editors, like SciTE will do it. Also search freeware sites such as sourceforge.net softpedial.com snapfiles.com filehippo.com etc..

There's a Windows port of the Linux vi editor called Vim. It's free and very powerful. It's a bit quirky to acclimate to, but it can do very powerful things in a few lines. Paragraph operations impossible to do practically in other editors can be done in Vim. You have to absorb some learning curve. But if you take to it you probably won't want to be without it. It's different than most Windows based editors in that it has "edit mode" and "command mode." A hotkey combination toggles the modes. When you get used to it you'll find yourself swapping modes without thinking, like shufflingh a deck of cards. It will either make you an editing whiz or a person seeking therapy for schizophrena. :)

I'm not a Word officiionado. A search brought me to this article