Question on search syntax

[Hampshire Nanny]

I've created a set of tags to indicate where I obtained a particular eBook. These use the format of source:xxxx such as source:BaenFree, source:ProjectGutenberg, source:Mobileread, source:Fictionwise, etc.

I want to locate any books in the library that don't have a source tag. I can do this:

not tags:"=source:ArthurClassic" and not tags:"=source:Baen eBooks" and not tags:"=source:BaenFree" and not tags:"=source:Goodreads" and not tags:"=source:ManyBooks" and not tags:"=source:Mobileread"

But what I really want is a generic search. I tried

not tags:"=source:*"

but that didn't work. Obviously I don't know how to indicate a match for any and all characters. (And I have a suspicion that this has something to do with regular expressions which I simply don't seem to be able to understand.)

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

But what I really want is a generic search. I tried

not tags:"=source:*"

but that didn't work. Obviously I don't know how to indicate a match for any and all characters. (And I have a suspicion that this has something to do with regular expressions which I simply don't seem to be able to understand.)

Try

not tags:"~^source:"

which is a regular expression search saying find any tags not beginning with "source:". The star in your attempt is superfluous because you don't care what follows the colon. If you actually want to ensure that there is at least one character after the colon then use

not tags:"~^source:."

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by chaley

Try

not tags:"~^source:"

which is a regular expression search saying find any tags not beginning with "source:". The star in your attempt is superfluous because you don't care what follows the colon. If you actually want to ensure that there is at least one character after the colon then use

not tags:"~^source:."

Chaley, thanks for responding. I have lots of conventional tags which don't start with "source:". Will your searches include those? (examples, "Science Fiction" "Biography")

What I really want is to find only the books that have no tag that starts with "source:". These books may or may not have other tags.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by Hampshire Nanny

Chaley, thanks for responding. I have lots of conventional tags which don't start with "source:". Will your searches include those? (examples, "Science Fiction" "Biography")

What I really want is to find only the books that have no tag that starts with "source:". These books may or may not have other tags.

The rules aren't clear to me. Given the following books, what should happen?

1. A book that has no tags.
2. A book that has tags but no tags beginning with source:
3. A book that has some tags that begin with source: and some tags that do not
4. A book that has only tags beginning with source:

[Hampshire Nanny]

Originally Posted by chaley

The rules aren't clear to me. Given the following books, what should happen?

1. A book that has no tags. -- should appear in the search results
2. A book that has tags but no tags beginning with source: -- should appear in the search results
3. A book that has some tags that begin with source: and some tags that do not -- should not appear
4. A book that has only tags beginning with source: -- should not appear

My goal is to identify any book that does not have a source attribute/tag. I want to know where every book came from and if I forgot to create the tag when I imported the book, I want to rectify that.

Thanks again for helping me out.

[BetterRed]

@Hampshire Nanny - why not

not tags:"source:"

My understanding is that would find all books that don't have a tag containing the string «source:»

It would exclude books that have a tag with «source:» in the middle or end of a tag, but do such tags actually exist in your library, e.g.

«tomato source: bottle»
«python source:»
«source:»

You can find the last with a search for

tags:"=source:"

BR

[chaley]

@Hampshire Nanny: The search I suggested in post 2 should do exactly what you want, find any book that does not have a tag beginning with source:.