Regex in search problems (NOT Search&Replace; the search bar)

[lairdb]

I'm having real trouble getting regex search in the search bar to work, especially within the identifiers field. (I don't know if it's a Python thing, but multi-valued fields seem to be getting treated... oddly.)

Here's what I'm trying to accomplish, in case there's an easier way. What I want the search to yield are rows that have an odid identifier that is not an ak/prime or ak/unlimited identifier. Here are three (made up) identifiers records:

isbn:9781611099690, odid:B00AESRRQS@ak/prime&B00AESRRQS@ak/unlimited

isbn:9781439147993, amazon:143914799X, goodreads:6933152, google:ibWojDN848kC, odid:346656@sdcl.overdrive.com&346656@sfpl.overdrive.com

isbn:9781439147993,  odid:346656@sdcl.overdrive.com&346656@sfpl.overdrive.com&B00AESRRQS@ak/unlimited

In this example, I would get rows 2 and 3, because they have odid identifiers that are not ak/prime or ak/unlimited; I would not get record 1 because although it has odid identifiers, none of them are non-ak.

The regex odid:.*@(?!(ak\/u|ak\/p)) does what I expect in a tester, but I can't get it to work in Calibre.

ETA: I've tried
odid:.*@(?!(ak\/u|ak\/p))
~odid:.*@(?!(ak\/u|ak\/p))
"~odid:.*@(?!(ak\/u|ak\/p))"
identifiers:"~odid:.*@(?!(ak\/u|ak\/p))"
and none of them yield results.

Thanks.

[theducks]

the field name is identifiers:
You are working with a (sub) field value

[jhowell]

This should work:

identifiers:"=odid:~@(?!ak/(unlimited|prime))"

[lairdb]

Originally Posted by theducks

the field name is identifiers:
You are working with a (sub) field value

Of course, a subfield. What is a subfield?

("Your search - subfield site:calibre-ebook.com - did not match any documents.")

Originally Posted by jhowell

This should work:

identifiers:"=odid:~@(?!ak/(unlimited|prime))"

Yes, thanks, and simpler than mine. Is there an actual syntax somewhere for the search box, where syntax like that might be discussed or exampled?

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/gui...arch-interface does not have anything about subfields, and the passing mention of the equals sign is incomplete and possibly inconsistent.

https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/regexp.html has a huge explanation of how regexes work -- and nothing at all about how to use them in the search bar, which is substantially different from the S&R usage.

Thanks.