Filtering search with wildcards in folder name

[ll]

I'm working on a page which will allow users to select the filtering
aftern typing search terms.
The documents which are to gbe search are located in parent folders
named as such:

12345678 Course Name
(where the first 8 digits are the unique course id and the following
is descriptive course title text)

Underneath each of the parent folders are their child folders
representing each time the course was taught. These child folders are
named with 8 digits: the first 4 digits are the course number; the 5th
digit is the semester (1, 2); the 6th is the professional yr (1,2,3,
4); the 7th and 8th are the last 2 digits of the year in which the
course was taught.

The search form will allow the user to select course number (first 4
digits of folder name), semester (5th digit), professional yr (6th
digit), and year taught (7th and 8th digits).

In adding this to the scope of the search, is there a way to use
wildcards, so that whatever else the other numbers in each folder name
are, the search will focus only upon the filtered positions in the
string?

Thanks for any help,
Louis