Regex Engine/Flavor?: Explorer++ 1.3.5

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haleba
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:58 pm

Regex Engine/Flavor?: Explorer++ 1.3.5

Post by haleba »

I downloaded Explorer++ for two purposes, as a Windows desktop application launcher (I cleaned up my desktop icon mess by putting icons in categorized subfolders under Desktop) and as a file searcher (Windows Search has failed too many times to find files that I know are on my system).

On file/folder searching I'm finding the regular expression search to be the most effective; however, I'm totally new to regex and the first hurdle in learning/applying regex is knowing what exact syntax or "flavor" of regex is being used. I have searched Google as well as this board and don't see an explicit statement of the regex engine being used.

My installation is from the Windows installer download page

Explorer++ v. 1.3.5.531 (64-bit Unicode build), build date 3/2/2013 21:14:07

Windows 8.1 v 6.3.9600

Thanks
Edgar5
Posts: 63
Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2017 7:22 am

Re: Regex Engine/Flavor?: Explorer++ 1.3.5

Post by Edgar5 »

I'm NOT one of this application's developers, but…I just examined the code because I have the same question. Here's what I found…
The code always uses

Code: Select all

std::wregex
which is a Unicode variant of

Code: Select all

std::basic_regex
. Some documentation may be found here:
http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/regex/basic_regex/
and here:
http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/regex/basic_regex
and extensive documentation here:
https://www.regular-expressions.info/stdregex.html

For my needs I find that the best solution falls into these categories:

·looking for an exact match I type in exactly what I want to find (including any extension as needed)
·if I know exactly how what I'm looking for starts I use "XXX*" (without the quotes, replacing XXX with the phrase I'm looking for)
·if I know exactly how what I'm looking for ends (e.g. all .txt files) I use "*XXX" (without the quotes, replacing XXX with the phrase I'm looking for)
·however, for general purposes I almost always use "*XXX*" (without the quotes, replacing XXX with the phrase I'm looking for)

I know that it is possible to build much more complex search strings but the above seems to be all I've ever needed.
Edgar5
Posts: 63
Joined: Sun Apr 02, 2017 7:22 am

Re: Regex Engine/Flavor?: Explorer++ 1.3.5

Post by Edgar5 »

Looking more deeply… the regular expression code looks like:

Code: Select all

 Expression, Flag
where "Expression" is the string that you enter and "Flag" tells the regular expression parser some details about how to get the job done. In Explorer++ the user has no control over the "Flag" portion and, with one exception, "Flag" is the default setting (the exception is that the search is set to be non-case-sensitive, a sensible setting since the Windows file system is not case-sensitive). This means that, by default, the search uses the ECMAScript "grammar"; Wikipedia has an article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECMAScript
haleba
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 29, 2018 12:58 pm

Re: Regex Engine/Flavor?: Explorer++ 1.3.5

Post by haleba »

@Edgar5

Thanks for the quick reply and the advice on using the search feature.

I need to do a lot of organizing and cleanup on my system and the search in Explorer++ is coming in quite handily for "spot checks". I am also installing Agent Ransack, which has the ability to export search results as well as regex so that I can catalog the more important files and folders on my system.
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