Smart Folders RegEx's [Feature Request]

Sinsear

It would be awesome if there was an "advanced" mode when creating a Smart Folder that allows you to enter POSIX Extended RegEx syntax. While I realize that the current implementation is essentially a GUI version of RegEx matching, there are several things that are missing. For example, writing your own RegEx's would make it a lot easier to match certain strings in a specific order, versus using the existing GUI based match criteria.

sjk

Hi @Sinsear,

Thanks for the suggestion. Do you have any specific usage cases you'd have for this that I could include when filing a feature request? Something difficult or impossible to do with existing custom search criteria. Thanks again!

Sinsear

I'm not sure if there's anything "impossible" per se with the current setup, but it would be a lot easier and faster for individuals with a computer science/engineering background to write your POSIX RegEx's rather than having to add a bunch of match criteria using the GUI.

MrC

There are many use cases for this. Examples:

• Find all cards with credit card numbers in their Notes: \d{15,16}
• Find all cards which appear to have Social Security numbers: \d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}
• Find all cards with possible email addresses: [^@]+@[^@]+.;[^@.]+

RE's provide a more convenient shortcut (than OR clauses) for single character variations (sometimes my last name is spelled with one P, sometimes two, sometimes one L sometimes two (that's 4 OR clauses instead of a single RE containing pp?....ll?....