Is it possible please to introduce "Wild Card" characters into the INSTR and REPLACE methods?

For example If Instr(String,"\****\") then ...................

Here I would want to test for any group of 6 characters of which the first and last are "\" and the middle 4 are anything.

or Replace(STRING,"\****\","")

Here I would want to delete any 6 character set which starts and ends with a "\".

Is there a character which I can use in place of the * of the above code lines which will be interpreted as any character at all? I am currently solving this by using Mid$ to look 5 characters ahead of a "\" and, if this is a "\", to parse out the 6 character group, place this in a second string variable and then work with this. However this method is rather cumbersome. A "Wild Card" character would solve the problem much more elegantly.

camoore

Wales, UK