Search for one word in longer tags?

[pinky62]

Hi I have several tags 3-4 words long. If say sister is a word common to all four tags how can I search all containing this word any where in the entire tag string. So looking for sister, sister is searching for family. If I type sister I want books with either one or both of these tags to show in search? How? TIA

[chaley]

Originally Posted by pinky62

Hi I have several tags 3-4 words long. If say sister is a word common to all four tags how can I search all containing this word any where in the entire tag string. So looking for sister, sister is searching for family. If I type sister I want books with either one or both of these tags to show in search? How? TIA

Without an example it isn't clear to me what you mean. Do you mean something like "sister, family, cat, dog" or do you mean "sister family, cat dog"?

If the first one, where the keywords are separate tags for the book, then use

tags:=sister or tags:=family

This finds books with either or both of the terms.

The second, where the words are embedded in the same tag, is

tags:sister or tags:family

This will match "family sister", and also "family, sister". Unfortunately it will also match "sisterhood".

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by chaley

The second, where the words are embedded in the same tag, is

tags:sister or tags:family

This will match "family sister", and also "family, sister". Unfortunately it will also match "sisterhood".

That's quite interesting.

A search for

title:union

in my Calibre library returns 10 results.

And

title:"union"

returns the same 10 results, including Road to disunion, Intimate Communion and Reunion Romance Novella. It will also match titles containing unions

Whereas in google searches, double quotes seem to restrict the results to the exact string.

(by the way, title:="union" will also return 10 results)

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

That's quite interesting.

A search for

title:union

in my Calibre library returns 10 results.

And

title:"union"

returns the same 10 results, including Road to disunion, Intimate Communion and Reunion Romance Novella. It will also match titles containing unions

Whereas in google searches, double quotes seem to restrict the results to the exact string.

This is explained in the calibre documentation . A brief recapitulation:

• Quoting a search term doesn't change its meaning. The quotes allow you to include spaces. Thus title:union and title:"union" are the same.
• The search kind controls how matching works. There are 4 kinds. My and your examples use contains matching. Prefixing the search with an equals changes it to exact match.

(by the way, title:="union" will also return 10 results)

If quotes are used then the search kind character must be inside the quotes.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by chaley

This is explained in the calibre documentation . A brief recapitulation:

• Quoting a search term doesn't change its meaning. The quotes allow you to include spaces. Thus title:union and title:"union" are the same.
• The search kind controls how matching works. There are 4 kinds. My and your examples use contains matching. Prefixing the search with an equals changes it to exact match.

If quotes are used then the search kind character must be inside the quotes.

Thanks Chaley. I'm quite familiar with the calibre default search options, but this topic got me wondering if there was some unbeknownst (to me) type of regular search that would return titles containing "union" and not any partial matches.

I'm aware that it's possible to get that by using regex, as in title:~\\bunion\\b , however using regular expressions is painful for non-programmers.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Comfy.n

Thanks Chaley. I'm quite familiar with the calibre default search options, but this topic got me wondering if there was some unbeknownst (to me) type of regular search that would return titles containing "union" and not any partial matches.

Exact match searches are "regular searches" (one of the 4). You just need to put the '=' inside the quotes.

EDIT: perhaps I misunderstood. Are you looking for word-level matching, as in "sister" matching "my sister jane" but not "the sisterhood of jane"? If so then as you say, the built-in search types won't help you beyond regex and template searching.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by chaley

Exact match searches are "regular searches" (one of the 4). You just need to put the '=' inside the quotes.

EDIT: perhaps I misunderstood. Are you looking for word-level matching, as in "sister" matching "my sister jane" but not "the sisterhood of jane"? If so then as you say, the built-in search types won't help you beyond regex and template searching.

I was just wondering. It's not that I'm looking into a specific use at the moment.

The search title:"=sister" would return a single-word title named "Sister", which don't exist in my library, so if I needed to get results that contain "sister" but not "sisterhood", using regex would be required, as you confirmed.

[Comfy.n]

Originally Posted by chaley

If quotes are used then the search kind character must be inside the quotes.

I see that, thanks. I think I was trying to see whether title:="union" would return the same results that title:~\\bunion\\b returns...

title:"=union" (equal sign inside the quotes) isn't useful in that case, as it will return a single-word title