Exclusion list in a query-by-example

Hi all. For the purpose of this question, I am assuming forms with the instruction: DELIMITERS "<>" A colleague asked me a kicker of a question today: When the user is entering a query (in either 4GL or ISQL) it is easy to put matching paterns between the brackets. For example, if I (the user) would query for all states beginning with "M" or "N", I would enter tyhe following between the delimiters on the screen: <[MN]*> A lesser known factoid: If I want all states that do NOT begin with M or N, the match pattern looks like: <[^MN]*> If I wish to match all states in the list {NY NJ MN} I would enter: <NY|NJ|MN> OK, so much for the preliminaries. Now I want query on all states NOT in that list. i.e. the constructed WHERE clause of the query would be: WHERE state NOT in ("NY", "NJ", "MN"). I believe what I am looking for is called an EXCLUSION LIST Is there any way for a user to enter exclusion list/pattern on the query form? I have thought of an indirect method: Let the user press a function key to pop up a window with a screen arrat and type in a list of exclusions in that window. However, that method is inappropriate to the targeted user. Thanks for any ideas. Even thanks for definite NO. -- -- Jake Salomon (Seeker of the probably impossible) . . _..-'( )`-.._ ./'. '||\\\\. }\\_/{ .//||` .`\\. ./'.|'.'||||\\\\|.. )o o( ..|//||||`.`|.`\\. ./'..|'.|| |||||\\`````` \\'@'/ ''''''/||||| ||.`|..`\\. ./'.||'.|||| ||||||||||||. | .|||||||||||| ||||.`||.`\\. /'|||'.|||||| ||||||||||||{ | }|||||||||||| ||||||.`|||`\\ '.|||'.||||||| ||||||||||||{ | }|||||||||||| |||||||.`|||.` '.||| ||||||||| |/' ``\\||`` | ''||/'' `\\| ||||||||| |||.` |/' \\./' `\\./ \\!|\\ /|!/ \\./' `\\./ `\\| V V V }' `\\ /' `{ V V V \\ \\ \\ V / / / +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | Impeccable Logic: A thought process which successfully | | resists chicken bites | +-----------------------------------------------------------+