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Find Files using Regular Expressions

Posted: 16 Aug 2004 09:59
by admin
In my inexhaustive struggle for happy customers I decided to add Regular Expressions (aka RegExp) as an additional way to define search patterns in Find Files.
In order to keep the interface as light as possible, and also to avoid the necessity of having two separate pattern histories (one for the "normal" pattern syntax, and another one for RegExp -- the two syntaxes will not be mixable), I generated the following idea: RegExp patterns will simply be prefixed by ">".

Examples:
cat & dog will be automatically treated as normal pattern.
>(\w{12}) will be automatically treated as RegExp pattern (excluding the ">" of course).

I think it's cool. Any objections?
Donald

Posted: 16 Aug 2004 10:18
by Gandolf
Looks cool to me!! I cannot see any problems since ">" is not a valid character in filenames. I assume since you want to keep the interface as light as possible then you don't want to have a checkbox for RegExp.

Posted: 16 Aug 2004 11:08
by Leopoldus
Very nice idea!

Posted: 16 Aug 2004 15:32
by admin
Gandolf wrote:I assume since you want to keep the interface as light as possible then you don't want to have a checkbox for RegExp.
Exactly, that was the idea! And also: just checking a checkbox does not translate a search term between the two pattern syntaxes, so you will have to type new stuff anyway. So, it's much easier to start a pattern with ">" to mark it as RegExp. In the combobox dropdown those items will be easily recognizable, too.

Since everybody likes it, it's gonna happen! :D

Posted: 16 Aug 2004 20:49
by admin
... and it happened! See new BETA... 8)