Best way to give options for starts with or contains in REST query

I have a REST service that allows peopl开发者_开发技巧e to put in a course title as part of the query to get scores, but, sometimes they may want to get a group, such as Calculus% for Calc 1, 2 and 3.

But, what is the best way to give them an option that makes sense?

For example, I have http://localhost/myrest/any/any/Calculus III

where the first two parameters are student id and some grade category.

I don't think having http://localhost/myrest/any/any/contains/Calculus III is a good use as then I will need to force them to use equals if that is what they are looking for.

Another option is http://localhost/myrest/any/any/Calculus% or http://localhost/myrest/any/any/%Calc% is another option, but then you have removed the option to easily use % as an allowed character.

So, to give additional filtering options in a REST URL, what is the best (defined as simplest/most intuitive for the user) way to allow contains or starts with.

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In your system, would the following query list all subjects in the grade category?
http://localhost/myrest/any/any/

If yes, then one option you can consider is extracting the non-exact subject name into a GET parameter. Thus without breaking the current logic where having a full name of the subject in the URL provides the score for that subject, you'd also have the ability to filter the list of subjects within the same grade category by means of the GET parameter.

For example:
http://localhost/myrest/any/any/?search=Calculus*

... could provide a result like this:

<subjects>
    <subject uri="/myrest/any/any/Calculus%20I">A</subject>
    <subject uri="/myrest/any/any/Calculus%20II">B</subject>
    <subject uri="/myrest/any/any/Calculus%20III">C</subject>
</subjects>