about search module

hello
I have a date base where the date of the article is in this format mm/dd/yyyy (12/03/1986)
Well, if I want to look articles for month and year, I have this problem.
The drupal search engine doesnt look for the character "/". This is the first problem. Is possible fix that?
The second question is if it exist a character to replace it for other character in a search.
For example, if I want to look for all the words that
start in "we"
finish in "ing"
and in the middle has two characters...
if this character "*" could replace any letter , I put in the search box "we**ing" and he would give me all words that
start in "we"
in the middle has two characters
and finish with "ing"
like wedding, webbing, etc...
Exist in drupal or php some solution for that?

thanks a lot for your time

javi