Regex Alias Filter Patterns

When creating an alias that uses a regular expression, you usually want to capture some part of the string typed by the user and use it in a file launching operation or web url.

For example you might use a regular expression like:

^search (.*)

With a result that opened:

http://www.google.com?search=$$1

In this way, the pattern matched by the (.*) is replaced in the url on launch.

Each alias can have multiple results that are shown on a match.

Normally, you want to display all results and let user choose from them like a menu.

However, it is now possible to let the user filter and score the results inside a regular expression alias, by specifying an optional filter/score pattern.

By specifying a filter/score pattern using the $$ notation, you can let the user filter only the results they want.

For example, in our search alias we might have 20 different search engines we know how to search.  So we configure our search alias with these 20 result urls, and we make the following changes in our regular expression alias:

Regular Expression:

^(.*) search (.*)

With RegEx Search Filter

$$1

And results:

http://www.google.com?s=$$2

http://www.yahoo.com?s=$$2

http://www.altavista.com?s=$$2

NOW, a user can type: yahoo search hello

And the $$1 group name (yahoo) will be used to filter out all results in the the result list that don't contain the word yahoo, while the $$2 phrase will be used for the actual search.