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Date: Sat, 29 Aug 2015 14:00:25 +0200 (CEST)
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To: "Stephen R. van den Berg (srb AT cuci DOT nl) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com]" <geda-user AT delorie DOT com>
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From: gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu
Subject: Re: [geda-user] when pcb disperse command loses elements
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On Fri, 28 Aug 2015, Stephen R. van den Berg (srb AT cuci DOT nl) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote:

> gedau AT igor2 DOT repo DOT hu wrote:
>
> For people which are not well versed in regexes, the current behaviour
> (anchored regex) is simpler to understand.
> So if you want to use it unanchored, it should be a configoption; then
> again, you might as well type .* before and/or after it when you need that
> type of behaviour.

I partially agree: less experienced users may want to avoid regex. 
However, with the original implementation they can not: a search for 
R1.3|R1.4 will not find R1.3 and R1.4 but a lot more. What I believe a 
non-regex user really expects is that only character '|' should have 
special meaning.

I believe the original solution fails to serve the casual users by 
surprising them with regex interpretation while it also may cause 
experienced users a headache figuring the forced anchoring.

To overcome this problem I've changed the search dialog in pcb-rnd from a 
single-string prompt to a attribute dialog with 2 fields: a pattern 
(string) and a method (enum). Method is either regex or string list.

Regex interprets the pattern as true regex without anchoring. String list 
splits the pattern at '|', strips whitepsace from words and uses 
strcasecmp() against each word.

As a bonus, with an attribute dialog it was trivial to make the dialog 
remember the last string entered and the last method selected.

Regards,

Igor2