boyter
Issues Using Special Characters in Regex
Hi there! I setup searchcode with one of my repos, and have been testing it out. I like it, and I like how easy it is to use, so I want to make it work. I started with some test searches, and was unable to find some strings that I definitely should be able to find using the tool, so I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas of what I need to do in order to make the tool recognize these strings.
First, I was using an API endpoint in this repo that I wanted to find. This is the specific string I was hoping to match:
../../api/studentAdmin/transportation/${personID},${calendarID}
After escaping a bunch of characters, I verified (using regex101.com) that the following regular expression matches the previous string:
/../../api/studentAdmin/transportation/${personID},${calendarID}/
I tried searching this exact term using searchcode, and came up with no results.
I was hoping to find all files containing the increment operator (++). I searched for ++, and found no results. Knowing these are both special characters, I tried escaping them, ++, and still had no results. I also tried double escaping, \+\+, with no results. I tried searching using a regular expression, /\+\+/ and /++/ and still had no results. When I search for ++ in vscode in this repo, I find 37 results, so it's not that the operator is not present in my code.
I also had trouble searching for strings that end with a period, or with a parenthesis, for example, student.instructor. or student.getStudent(
Let me know if anyone has any ideas how I should be searching for strings. Escaping characters does not seem to make any difference, and searching using a regular expression also does not seem to make any difference. I just want to use this tool to find any exact matches to strings that I am searching for, even if they contain special characters. Thank you!
Hi sorry about late response I have been getting some surgery and offline.
This is a limitation in the way the search is constructed. As you say its picking it up as a regex, but I am not familiar with how that operates inside lucene inside the application. Something for me to look at.
Thank you! Let me know if you have any progress. I'm going to put this on the back burner for now, but if I have some time I will also take a look at see if I can figure it out as well. Here are a couple stack overflow articles that I found that look like they would probably be helpful:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42005525/how-to-extend-lucenes-standardanalyzer-for-custom-special-character-treatment https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6107875/how-to-search-special-characters-in-lucene