A specialized type of substring search. A prefix search involves matching a term in a query string to indexed terms, with an explicit wildcard character at the end of the query term. A match occurs when the characters in the query term (minus the wildcard character) match the beginning of an indexed term. For example, the query string car* will match car, carpet, and carnivore. Search Kit supports prefix searching in inverted and inverted-vector indexes. See also search, substring searching, wildcard character.