Searching with the alternation and both Subject & Poster

[lordhog]

Hello,

I have a two part question regarding RegEx in Newsbin. I am trying to devise a search pattern that searches for multiple items so I am using the alternation metacharacter. So long as I am using a single element (e.g., "(America|Europe)") for each alternation the search works okay. When I use a two word alternation the search fails (e.g., "(America|Indo China)") or "(America|Indo.China)"). If I perform a search for the element two element by itself (e.g., "(Indo China)") then the search works fine. If I perform the same searching using an online RegEx tester (e.g., http://www.regexr.com/) then my RegEx works fine. How do I get my RegEx to work correctly within Newsbin's subscription search?

The second question I have it, how can I search against both the subject line and the poster? More often, I want to search for a poster, but exclude posts that might have certain content in the subject line.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Mark

[Quade]

How do I get my RegEx to work correctly within Newsbin's subscription search?

Newsbin's internet search doesn't use Regex. It's more like a google search.

"word word -notword"

You can apply a regex filter after the search though using a search profile or typing it in. In your case, I'd probably search for the poster, then apply the regex to the subject after the fact.

Spaces are a problem in the current regex. Newsbin interprets them as an "and" so you might need to do "Indo.*China" to remove any spaces. "Indo.China" would work too if you know only one character separates them.

The watch lists don't currently do it but supporting a combination of regex on subject and search on poster, is probably the next thing I'm going to implement. I use "poster search" watch lists to collect up everything a particular poster posts into a dedicated list, then load up that watch list and use regex on the subjects of the results.

[lordhog]

Quade,

Thanks for the info. Are there plans for Newsbin's internet search to use RegEx in the future? I don't use Watchlist I only perform a search every once in a while and having a watchlist seems like a good way to burn through my monthly searches quickly.

Regards,
Mark

[dexter]

No, Internet Search is a boolean search. The majority of users are not familiar with regular expressions. We have no plans to support Regular Expressions through that interface.

[Quade]

Thanks for the info. Are there plans for Newsbin's internet search to use RegEx in the future? I don't use Watchlist I only perform a search every once in a while and having a watchlist seems like a good way to burn through my monthly searches quickly.

If you search once a day, you basically do (30 * number of watch lists) searches a month + whatever manual searches you do. Searches don't roll over so, it's "use it or lose it". The search results accumulate so, you don't need to re-do a search to see the results of all the periodic searches. They remain in the watch list till you purge them.

For manual searches, it's probably a good idea to do what I'm suggesting, which is search on poster, then subject filter. You can create an arbitrarily complicated filter profile with regexes.

[lordhog]

Thanks, Quade and Dexter. Perhaps, one day, Internets searches might support RegEx said the dimly lite star in the heavens.