Feature Request v2 - custom commands

[mouser]

custom commands will be added to version 2.
you will be able to specify arbitrary sets of regular expression patterns, and then menus of one or more programs to launch based on the command.

this will let you do things like design commands for searching the web, ie
"search mangos"
could be set up to launch a browser and perform a google search for "mangos"

stuff like that; should be very general and very flexible.


we will add special features like being able to paste text in current application, etc.
i'd be interested in people who use such tools that let you type keywords to expand in text, about what kinds of things would be nice to support.

each command will be able to be configured with a single action to perform when you hit return after typing the pattern,
OR with a menu of actions that you can select from using the 1-9 keys like you handle search results.

[mouser]

i'd like to talk about possible kinds of commands.

to recap:

you will be able to define regular expression masks for command aliases, which will allow you to present a list of "commands" that match a string.

in the simplest case you would have a simple alias like:
"mynotes" which launches "c:\program\files\ultraedit.exe d:\mynotes.txt"

in more complicated cases you could have a command alias like
s (.*),(.*)

which would match
s taxes 100

and present a list of 5 options like
google search | http://www.google.com?s=$1?returnmatches=$2
yahoo search | http://www.yahoo.com?s=$1?returnmatches=$2

you get the idea.

but maybe it would be nice to add some extra kinds of functions besides just launching programs and websites.

for example clipboard pasting.

so you could have alias
"paste"
with the following entries
date | PASTE %currentdate%
time | PASTE %currenttime%

you get the idea.  so you using a program, you hit break key to launch f&r, type "paste"
and up comes two entries in result box:
1. date
2. time

you select the one you want and it closes and pastes it in your app.

any other ideas?

[kfitting]

Yeah preconfigured would be awesome and cut down on obtuseness (yes, it's a new word), but is their any way to make a gui?  Or a wizard? or something for complete newbies to regex (myself included)?  I remember there was a discussion elsewhere on this site for a regex helper (started by Scott I believe... not sure).  Perhaps something like this, or even simpler could be implemented.  The gui wouldnt have to translate from normal english to regex, just give different places to fill in the various parts.  Just a few quick ideas...

Kevin

[Carol Haynes]

How about http://www.codeproject.com/dotnet/expresso.asp as a starting point /

[mouser]

i'm a big fan of examples.
i think a nice help page on regular expressions, plus some good example preconfigured commands will be enough to demonstrate to most people who care how to do it.  lets remember as you say 99% of f&r users will never make their own commands, let's just give them a nice set of preconfigured ones that beats the competition so that they don't feel like they are missing some nice commands.

[zridling]

Wow, what a great link to Expresso, Carol, thanks! Regex makes my brain swell, so guys like me need all the help I can get learning what I can.

[Carol Haynes]

My thoughts (if I can count them as that) exactly ....

[nontroppo]

Other excellent resources:

http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/ - Regex coach is an excellent tool for learning regex's

http://www.regexbuddy.com/ - commercial, but probably the best regex test / learning tool

http://www.regular-expressions.info/ - from the creator of regex buddy, an excellent tutorial

[kfitting]

What about only searching specific folders?  For example, at work I'm doing a specific project, I would like to constrain my search within folders for that project.  This would speed up my search and make it possible to name files similarly in different places.  If this is addressed, it would be handy to be able to specify whether the search is recursive or not.

Kevin

[mouser]

yes, this should be addressed by the "modifiers" feature

[mouser]

i'm working on regex commands now, will def. have a version up this week with regex supporting commands, like conducting web searches, etc.