simple TAG problem

[alexxxm]

I am trying to get used using tags - after a long life spent keeping my books ordered by directory structures...

I have some problems with the search by tag: one of the most basic category I have is "Science" - for scientific books of course... Moreover, I have a lot of books tagged by "Science Fiction"

I just discovered that tag:Science (and also tag:"Science" - no difference: what's the "" used for???) bundles together the two categories.
There is ANY way to search a tag for an exact match? I cannot find it!

thanks for your help...


alessandro

[itimpi]

The quotes are just to allow you to have values with spaces - otherwise they are not necessary.

I do not think there is an exact match facility (although I would like one). In your case you would have to use something like:

tag:science and not tag:fiction

[chaley]

I asked this question earlier, and found that there is no exact match search in the GUI. However, it can be done using a compound query. In your example the search string

tag:"science" and not tag:"science fiction"

will give you what you want.

You can use the tag editor available from the edit metadata dialog to delete tags using exact match. This helps if one accidentally creates a tag that matches almost everything, such as 'e' (I once did this. ).

Edit: Ooops. Just noticed that I repeated itimpi's advise. Apologies for the extra traffic.

[alexxxm]

I find it really surprising that an exact match is not present - doesnt seem hard to implement (but I'm not a developer, so what do I know?)
Anyway, there are a lot of cases where it will not be possible to easily discriminate (author:dick reporting P.H.Dick's and G.Dickson's books for example...)

alessandro

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by alexxxm

I am trying to get used using tags - after a long life spent keeping my books ordered by directory structures...

There is ANY way to search a tag for an exact match? I cannot find it!

Chaley and itimpi gave you good examples for the search bar line. There is a GUI method to do the same thing. Click on the Luggage Tag icon in the lower right corner and play around with the options. It lets you include or exclude any tag or combination of tags. In short order you will be able to select whichever groups you want.

[chaley]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

Click on the Luggage Tag icon in the lower right corner and play around with the options. It lets you include or exclude any tag or combination of tags. In short order you will be able to select whichever groups you want.

Thanks for this. Your post indicated that there must be a way of combining tags that I hadn't found yet. Focused experimentation resulted in ...

The trick here is to hold down 'shift' or 'control' while clicking on tags. That way tags are added to the expression instead of replacing it, permitting easy construction of complex compound expressions that reduce the selection to what you are interested in. Be sure to select the right match type in the drop-down box so you get what you want ('and' or 'or'). As far as I can tell, one cannot parenthesize the list and use a combination of and/ors.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by chaley

The trick here is to hold down 'shift' or 'control' while clicking on tags. That way tags are added to the expression instead of replacing it, permitting easy construction of complex compound expressions that reduce the selection to what you are interested in. Be sure to select the right match type in the drop-down box so you get what you want ('and' or 'or'). As far as I can tell, one cannot parenthesize the list and use a combination of and/ors.

Thanks for clarifying this for the OP. It was so long since I used it I forgot all about holding down the shift key for multiple selections and I didn't even mention the drop-down menu for match all or match any.

[theducks]

And while doing the selection, clicking a tag(valu) will flip it to a minus sign for a "Not".