Help: Creating condensed expressions

[David Hirschfield]

Here's the problem: Given a list of item names like:

apple1
apple2
apple3_SD
formA
formB
formC
kla_MM
kla_MB
kca_MM

which is a subset of a much larger list of items,
is there an efficient algorithm to create condensed forms that match 
those items, and only those items? Such as:

apple[12]
apple3_SD
form[ABC]
kla_M[MB]
kca_MM

The condensed expression syntax only has [...] and * as operators. [...] 
matches a set of individual characters, * matches any string.
I'd be satisfied with a solution that only uses the [...] syntax, since 
I don't think it's possible to use * without potentially matching items 
not explicitly in the given list.

I'm not sure what this condensed expression syntax is called (looks a 
bit like shell name expansion syntax), and I'm not even sure there is an 
efficient way to do what I'm asking. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks,
-David

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