Filter Global Search (inspired by RegEx Non-capturing match)

[malecjan]

Use case or problem

Frequent situation: I search for term1 but only in context of term2. For example I search for “Linking” but only within files that mention also “Obsidian”.
Search string produces thousands of irrelevant results which I have to carefully scroll to visually find the relevant one.

Example:
linking Obsidian -path:(MyPath)
↓

file1
- ...Obsidian...
- .....Obsidian.
- Obsidian......
- ..Obsidian....
file2
...
fileN
- ...Obsidian...
- Obsidian......
- ..Obsidian....
- ...linking...
- ..Obsidian....
...

Proposed solution

Take inspiration from regular expressions (Non-capturing match).
Implement search operator that does not modify interpretation of search string
except that associated/enclosed search terms are not listed in search results.
The operator could be named e.g. “filter:” or preferably concise “+”, the opposite of “-”.

Example from above would change to:
linking +Obsidian -path:(MyPath)
or
linking filter:(Obsidian) -path:(MyPath)
↓

fileN
- ...linking...
fileM
- ...linking in Obsidian...

This approach might result in matching files without any captured results. List of search results needs to be able to report files without particular results.
Example:
( backlink OR +(linking OR linked) ) +Obsidian -path:MyPath
↓

file1
- ...backlink...
fileN    // FileN matches query but does not contain any search result. 
fileM
- ...backlinks in Obsidian...

additional thoughts

The wordy method with “filter:” is easier to intuitively understand by new reader than “+”. But harder to read and edit and time consuming during frequent searches by experienced user. Both “filter:” and syntactic sugar “+” could work in parallel if there is no agreement on preferred syntax.

---

keywords: exclude, filter, global, hide, restrict context, search

Current workaround

• sought after in help-thread: How to query lines with "string2" inside files with "string1"

Related feature requests

• This might well be specific proposal for Filtering Everywhere!
• similar issue/usecase in backlinks / unlinked mentions: YAML Property to exclude a file / path from the current note's backlinks?
  • keyword: indexing

[CawlinTeffid]

Not precisely what you’re asking for: you could try section:(Obsidian linking), block:(Obsidian linking) or line:(Obsidian linking). But they will exclude instances where “linking” is too far from “Obsidian” in the text — at their farthest apart they’d have to be under the same heading.

As another workaround you might consider tagging the sorts of things you’re likely to filter by (#Obsidian). That would reduce your irrelevant previews to 1 per file.

The opposite of - (exclude) would be + (include), not + (filter). “Include” is the default, so we don’t use +; it’s implied. I’d go with filter: (or some other interface).

I’d consider renaming the post to “Filter search”.

[CawlinTeffid]

Another person has asked abut this, and @I-d-as posted a workaround that I should have thought of:

How to query lines with "string2" inside files with "string1"

Good question! I tried a few that I thought would work and didn’t get the results I imagined I would. I am definitely going to try to sit down and figure this out tomorrow because assumed this would have been pretty easy to accomplish in ways similar to the ones you showed. In the meantime, one workaround would be to use the following regular expression as a search: /string1.*string2|string2.*string1/ It isn’t going to bring you right to the line you want, but the line you want will be at t…

EDIT: The workaround doesn’t fully work, but I posted a version that does:

How to query lines with "string2" inside files with "string1"

Here’s a modification of @I-d-as’s workaround that selects across >1 line: /string1.*(.*\n)*.*string2|string2.*(.*\n)*.*string1/ It will select from the first string1 to the last string2 (and vice-versa), so you won’t see individual results for any occurrences of string2 between them. I believe this modification using “lookahead/lookbehind assertions” would fulfill @AMGMNPLK’s entire request, but it freezes Obsidian: /(?<=string1.*(.*\n)*.*)string2|string2(?=.*(.*\n)*.*string1)/ I guess it …

As mentioned in that post I also found a way to do what you want in principle, but it freezes Obsidian.

It might be possible to search the context term, copy the results, and run some kind of macro to search the main term using each of the results in a path: selector.

Obviously a built-in syntax would be better, or a way to chain searches (like a pipe in shell scripting).