Search multiple items at once

[graphixillusion]

Hi there. As the title says, instead of using this method:

xan search -i "string to search 1" | xan search -i "string to search 2" and so on, is it possible to compact it using one command only? i already tried doing something like

xan search -i -r "string to search1|string to search 2" but it doesn't seems to work.

I'm using " instead of ' becouse i'm under Windows OS

[Yomguithereal]

See the --patterns flag of the search command that makes it possible to feed multiple patterns at once from stdin or a file.

[Yomguithereal]

It will return any row matching any pattern though. Not rows matchinh all patterns. It can be thought of as an OR combination vs a AND combination so I don’t know whether this addresses your particular issue?

[graphixillusion]

I would like to achieve the same output i got if i pipe two times with two different searches. So in my case i would like to search all the rows with only the first and the second string (or more if the strings to search are > than 2). Why in this case the regex doesn't work?

Btw i have tried with this also but doesn't seems to work:

cat test.txt | xan search -i --patterns - file.csv

test.txt content:

string1
string 2

this command doesn't work either:

echo string1 & echo string 2 | xan search -i --patterns - file.csv

it works only when the string to search is one:

echo string to search | xan search -i --patterns - file.csv (works)
cat test.txt | xan search -i --patterns - file.csv (works when test,txt has just one line)

[ggrothendieck]

Any of these work where ? is a character not in the file:

xan search -r "string1.*string2|string2.*string1"

xan filter -d? "contains(col(0), /string1/) and contains(col(0), /string2/)"

This would work in some regex engines but it seems not here:

xan search -r "(?=.*string1)(?=.*string2)" 

[graphixillusion]

Nope, doesn't seem to work. I think for now i will stick to multiple pipes.

[ggrothendieck]

Exactly what does not work? Here is a reproducible example.

> type string12.csv
strings
string1 string2
string2 string1
string1 a
string2

>xan search -r "string1.*string2|string2.*string1" string12.csv
strings
string1 string2
string2 string1

>xan filter -d? "contains(col(0), /string1/) and contains(col(0), /string2/)" string12.csv
strings
string1 string2
string2 string1

> xan --version
0.52.0-rc.4

> ver
Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.26100.4652]

[graphixillusion]

I think i've found the problem: with a custom separator char in the csv, i need to specify the flag -d for the custom char to make the search with the regex working good. So with this command:

xan select col1,col2 -d; data.csv | xan search -i -r "string1.*another string" -d;

it works but in this case the output of the view command is not correctly formatted:

Displaying 1 col from 3 rows of

-	col1,col2
0	string1,another string
1	string1,another string
2	string1,some another string

while it should be:

-	col1	col2
0	string1	another string
1	string1	another string
2	string1	some another string

without the -r flag the output is correctly formatted

[ggrothendieck]

Regarding

xan search -r "(?=.*string1)(?=.*string2)" 

which does not currently work it would be nice if one could specify an alternate regex engine via a flag so one could use lookarounds. The more expressive but potentially slower fancy-regex crate in rust supports that.