Wildcards are not yet supported, but since you are already the third person to ask for it in two days, it will really deserve to be looked at. I will keep you posted.
I am afraid I don't understand your question. Would you mind elaborating it?
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is normally used with javascript in web browers and in web services (like geonames) which are consumed by web browsers. Yahoo offers several JSON webservices to access their search engine.
The geonames server is programmed in java, this is even better than Python, isn't it
I am not saying remove/replace or change the JSON at all. I am suggesting that maybe a seperate already availible search engine along side the JSON would allow for wildcard searches.
It would be an easy temp fix until the currunt schema could be rewritten to allow wildcard searchs.