Stemming Search

[cognos_t]

I have an existing report that works, and I am trying to enhance the functionality... so far without success.

Environment: Report Studio 8, running on Win7/IE8.  Not allowed to use SQL.  Not sure what backed is used.

The existing report takes in up to 1000 string values, using a multi-select/multi-line text input box, assigning to parameter p_items_p.  My query has a detail filter [SEGMENT1]in?p_items_p?

I would like to improve this report, by making a "stemming" search of each input string.  I want to take the leftmost 4 characters, then gather any [SEGMENT1] results that contain that substring.
example;
     input 1234AB, 5678CD
     output 1234AB, 1234XY, 1234ZZ, 1234567, AA5678, 555678-A, etc

I tried the following:  [SEGMENT1]in(lpad(?p_items_p?,4)) This seemed to work for the first value, but not for the rest of the input list, plus my Prompt Page did not come up at all.

Any recommendations?