FullSearch

FullSearch

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FullSearch

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General

Full search provides an extended search facility for wiki wide searches supporting regular expressions. To start the full search dialog either:

press Ctrl-Alt-F
select "Wiki / Search Wiki" from the main menu

The search dialog is non-modal, this means that you can move between pages and edit them while the dialog is open. The right side of the dialog shows the search results, the left side contains the options to control the search. Full search supports a "find & replace" mode and allows to save a search specification for later reuse in the search store. A search can be limited to a specific subset of wiki pages, using the page list dialog.

Attention: Full search operates on the data in the database. If there is a page in the editor that is not yet saved, then those changes can't be seen by the search dialog.

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The search dialog

The dialog window consists of 5 area's:

search area, left top
result area, right top
replace area, left middle
store area, left bottom
general area, right bottom

This section lists the options that are available for each of those area's.

Search area

In this area you specify your search criteria and start the search. During a session with a wiki, WikidPad will store the criteria and settings of all the searches that have been performed, so they can be recalled and repeated as many times as you want, during that same session.

• Wiki Search
A text field to enter the regex pattern to be searched for. The radio buttons beneath the field control the interpretation of the pattern as either "single" regex or "anded" regex.
The field actually is a combobox; you can use it's button to recall an earlier performed search and repeat that or adjust it to create a new search.

• Simple regex
Indicates that the pattern contains only a single regex.

• Anded" regex
Indicates that the pattern contains multiple regex's connected with "and". For example: to search for pages with both "search" ánd "wiki" in them type: "search and wiki" and check this radio button.

Remark: Some operations, like Replace, are not available in "Anded" regex mode.

• Case sensitive
Full search is case insensitive by default. To make a search case sensitive, check this option.

• Whole word
Full search is "partial word" (character mode) by default. To make a search "whole word", check this option.

• Find
A button to start the search process. When finished, a list of matching pages is shown in the result area, optionally with the number of occurring matches in parentheses and/or a few characters of context if so set in the options. If the result area remains empty, the search didn't find any matching pages.

• Set Page list
This option allows to limit the search to a specific subset of a wiki's pages. Clicking this button opens the page list dialog with whitch you can specify that subset. The full search dialog disappears until the page list dialog is closed. If you save the search, the page list dialog settings are saved whíth it.

Example:
Open the page list dialog and enter the regex:

"(?!ChangeLog)"
to include all pages exept those starting with "ChangeLog" or
(?!.*?Intro)
to include all pages exept those where "Intro" is somewhere in the name.

close the dialog and define and run your full (content) search. Depending on what you specified, the result list will not contain any matches in the ChangeLog pages or in the Intro pages.

Result area

The result area is the area where the result of a search is shown; it only has two controls: the list and the "copy" button. If no pages are found, the list remains empty. The results are listed per wiki page, not per found pattern. That is, if there are 3 "hits" on the same page, the list only shows the page once, optionally with the number of hits found. The appearance of the items in the list depends on the settings of the "full search" options; see bottom page.

• Result list"
Below is a screenshot of part of a result list, with the results for two pages:

Each item in the list consists of:

a blue clickable bar, functioning as the "next occurence" button
the page name
in parentheses: the current occurence on the page and the number of occurences on the page separated by a slash "/".
- if the option "count occurences" is set to false, the number of occurences is represented by a questionmark "?".
on the next line(s): a portion of the found text with the pattern
- the size of the portion depends on the setting of the "Context characters..." option.

When there are more then one occurences in a page, you can skip through them by:

clicking the blue bar.
selecting the page item in the list and pressing F3.

The item in the list is updated to show what the current occurence is.

Double clicking on an item - outside the blue bar! - brings you to the page and the matching occurrence shown for it in the list item. If the page was already loaded, a double click brings you to the next occurrence on the page.

• Copy to clipboard: "Page names"
This copies the page names in the result list to the clipboard. The entries are copied as text, one page name per line, each in brackets. This way you can use them to insert a list of page links into any wiki page or copy the page list into the manual page list of the page list dialog.

Replace area

WikidPad supports a wiki wide search and replace facility; the base for it is the full search complemented with the options in this area. Replace is not available when the regex type is set to "anded".

• Replace by
An input field to enter the text with which the found pattern should be replaced.

• Find next
A button to find the next match in the current or next page and select it.

• Replace
A button to replace the current selected match with the text in "Replace by" and go to next matching part.

• Replace all
A button to replace áll occurences in all pages with the text in "Replace by". The function will ask for confirmation first and display the number of replacements when it's done.

Occurences can of course be selected manually and replaced using the Replace button.

Store area

Wikidpad supports a "search store"; here you can store search specifications - i.e. search criteria ánd search settings - so you can repeat a search without having to re-invent it every time you need it. If a search is based on a page list, then the list specification is also stored and/or retrieved as part of the search specifications. Search stores are wiki specific, for all sorts of obvious reasons there is no "global" search store.

Remark: The "Replace by" text is not considered part of the search specification and is not saved with it.

• Save Search
A button with which the current search can be saved to the wiki search store. You will be asked to specify a name for the search. If a search with that name already exists, you will be asked for confirmation to overwrite it with the new search specifications. After being saved, the search name will appear in the list of stored searches.

Remark: This "save" is in fact the equivalent of the common "save as" command. It will not re-save an existing stored search, but always ask for the name and for permission to overwrite.

• Saved Searches
The list with the names of all the search specifications, that currently have been saved to the search store.

• Delete Search(es)
A button to delete the currently selected search(es) in the search store. The function will ask for confirmation before actually performing the delete.

• Load Search
A button to load the currently selected search into the searching area and change it or otherwise execute it again.

• Load and Run Search
A button to load ánd run the currently selected search. Double clicking a name in the list has the same effect.

• The views tree
The searches in the search store are not only shown in this section of the search dialog, but are also listed in the "searches" node of the views tree. The node is only shown if the wiki's search store is not empty.
When you expand the node of a listed search, WikidPad will perform the search on the spot and the node will list all the pages that currently fullfill the search's specifications. It therefore might take some time for the node to expand and show the resulting page list.

General area

• Options
Starts a dialog to set options for the search; for their meaning see "Settings / Options" below. This dialog is nót a temporary override of the global application settings, but will actually chánge those settings.

• Close
Closes the dialog. Pressing the Esc key does the same.

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Settings

Options

Application settings: Searching, full search

• Context characters: before and after
Chooses the number of characters to show before and after a found match as context in wiki-wide search. For an "anded" regex, the beginning of the page is shown with so many characters as the sum of the "before" and "after" values. Using context may slow down the searching a bit.

• Count Occurrences
Counts how many matches a page contains and shows this number in parentheses after each page name in wiki-wide search results. This option slows down searching.

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previous: Back
parents: FastSearch, Intro7Searching, ItemSearching, Link insertions, PageListDialog, Renaming wikiwords
inserts: FullSearchResultList
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