blog: advanced search 101

[nikos]

here's the comment area for today's blog post found at
http://zabkat.com/blog/desktop-detective.htm

[Kilmatead]

$System.Image.VerticalSize / $System.Image.HorizontalSize != 4/3

Any points you win for being clever (you almost had me confused there ) you lose by skimping on the modulo example. <Sigh> It does, however, open the way for a "most obfuscated ruleset" competition - endless fun abusing a variant of the Socratic method.

You did cheat a little, though - I rather expected complex expressions (once committed) to be lexicographically parsed into their component rules for clarity, not left as a single expression (all scrunched up in the "find text" layout). But that's just me being me.

And I bet there's a sneaky little itch behind your left eye that wishes you had thought of this complex-mode before you spent all that time designing the GUI for arbitrary grouped tree-rule indentation manipulation.

[nikos]

eh? are you talking about the presentation or what?

[Kilmatead]

No, I'm just refuting your assertion that "Arguably this [...] isn't for everyday searches" - whereas I find that (given a certain mindset) it's actually easier to just define everything as a complex search and be done with it. No extra little boxes to fill in, no alternate modes to worry about, etc.

Once you get used to the syntax, it's roughly the same as writing a bunch of if/else/then conditions scripturally. Simplified, to be sure, as there are no "actions" to be taken, but the logic flows the same from the brain to the keyboard, so it makes more sense than faffing about with splintered little input boxes.

And this way I only have a single editbox to squint at with your ridiculously tiny Font-From-Hell™. (Like it would really kill you to allow users to change that? Despite it apparently being your trademark...)