The “name: ” search qualifier and what it means for a macro to “have a name”

Questions & Suggestions
1

The wiki tells us that the search qualifier name: will “match any macro that has a name matching the specified string”.

That implies to me that, when using the search term name: lettuce, a macro that has the name Foo lettuce is a match, whereas a macro named Rotary pelican is not. However, if Rotary pelican contains the word “lettuce” in any of its actions, it will actually be a match! It will be found using a search for name: lettuce and it will be included in a smart macro group that uses that term.

I tentatively conclude the following:

  • There is no obvious way to match only on the name of a macro group.
  • “Has a name” in the wiki means “contains the text”.
  • “Name” is therefore not the best name for what it does…

I wonder if I have forgotten or overlooked previous discussions on this subject…

2

Are you asking for the qualifier “name” to be changed or are you asking for a new qualifier, perhaps “macroname” that searches only that? What do you see is the best solution?

3

My initial aim was to check whether I had misunderstood the situation somehow.

I still make heavy use of my method of limiting which macros appear in a Trigger macro by name prompt (as described in this topic) and in recent times, I had been surprised to find some rogue items appearing in the smart group and hence into the prompt. That finally led me into looking today into why that was happening, and into raising the subject here.

I don’t think name would ever be changed, because doing so would undoubtedly break quite a lot of macros out there! Perhaps it could be deprecated and an alternative label provided, e.g. text (I just know there will be objections to that particular suggestion, and I look forward to gaining insights by reading them!).

Certainly I should like to see a search qualifier that does what the wiki description seemed to me to describe, but I think the most I dare hope for is that the description in the wiki page will be tweaked! On the face of it, your naming suggestion is a good one, @DocOck, but I haven’t otherwise given the matter any thought at this stage.

4

name: lettuce is two tokens, so it will match any macro that matches both name: and lettuce.

Use name:lettuce (no space).

5

Yikes. It was so simple. I feel embarrassed.

6

Don't, it's the second time its come up recently so I have added a note to the wiki page.

7

Both times from me! :rofl:

I just had this feeling, you know… :wink:

Thanks @peternlewis!

8

I don’t think I’ll make the same mistake again… If I do, feel free to take turns with the clue bat.[1]

In theory, it might be “nice to have” an action warning[2] appear in the Editor whenever a search quantifier is followed by a space, but I wouldn’t expect that to be at all easy to implement and it’s not as if it seems to be a common issue.[3]

I’ve added a note to that topic in order to correct my instruction to include a space![4]

  1. Oh, you say that should be cluebat? Now I’m getting stressed. ↩︎

  2. The ⚠️ sign that appears in Search and replace actions when it hasn’t been set to a regular expression mode but you’ve started typing something that looks regexy. ↩︎

  3. Other than being common to me. ↩︎

  4. A “trigger macro by name” prompt for only the active macros that you want to see - #3 by kevinb ↩︎