As others concluded, lookup does not match partial keys. It has been
on my wish list for some time, but it would certainly complicate a lot
of the other functions of lookup (how about when the abbreviations are
not unique, would you could the match of the stem or of the
abbreviation, etc).

One way to address this is how we did this before the generalized
input ranges supported lookup on words. You build a cascade of lookup
stages, each of them handling the keys with length N. Keys and detail
are directed to the right lookup stage. When the number of lookup
stages is very large, it may be attractive to use something like 'deal
secondary' to route them.

If you're really looking for abbreviations (rather than partial keys)
then it may be simpler to just feed the valid abbreviations for each
key into the lookup table.

Sir Rob the Plumber

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