Either/Or search isn't working...

[MarjaE]

I may have missed a previous question here, because the site ignores "either" and "or" when searching for "either" or "or".

But searching "term1" (term2 OR term3) just gets a red search bar and ignores term2 and term3. And searching "term1" (term2|term3), as suggested here https://manual.calibre-ebook.com/regexp.html , also gets a red search bar and ignores term2 and term3.

[theducks]

Which search bar?
What did you enter

red or blue

in the main search works and show all that have either red or blue

in REGEX searches (MDE,editor) it would be

red|blue

[MarjaE]

In the search bar at the top of the Calibre window.

And I tried OR first. B OR C works. A (B OR C) turns red.

[Montana Harper]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

In the search bar at the top of the Calibre window.

And I tried OR first. B OR C works. A (B OR C) turns red.

I don't know if it's the optimal/suggested way of doing it, but I usually search for A, then click on the Virtual Library button and select "current search" (which clears the search bar while still showing only the items that fulfilled the search for A), and then do the search for B OR C. You can keep adding to the "current search" using this method, winnowing down by subsearch after subsearch if you want.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Montana Harper

I don't know if it's the optimal/suggested way of doing it, but I usually search for A, then click on the Virtual Library button and select "current search" (which clears the search bar while still showing only the items that fulfilled the search for A), and then do the search for B OR C. You can keep adding to the "current search" using this method, winnowing down by subsearch after subsearch if you want.

Never knew that, maybe it's a bug

Thanks for the tip.

FTR - I normally wrap each term in parentheses, to make the expression rock-solid non-ambiguous.

BR

[chaley]

Originally Posted by MarjaE

In the search bar at the top of the Calibre window.

And I tried OR first. B OR C works. A (B OR C) turns red.

FWIW and apologies for the late reply: the implied "and" doesn't currently work when using parentheses. The "and" must be explicit, as in

A and (B or C)

I will fix this.

And again FWIW: note that "and" takes precedence over "or", meaning that

A B C D E or F

is parsed as

(A and B and C and D and E) or F

*not*

(A and B and C and D) and (E or F)

BetterRed has it right: use parentheses to be sure you get what you are asking for.

EDIT: Fix will be in the next calibre release (3.23)