I tried to replicate this example from the help-page (see screenshot): https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/cat_formulas.htm (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/cat_formulas.htm)
sc1.jpg
To be concrete, this example:
@Category[@All|Beach|Daytona]
Therefore I've created a category-tree like the following:
@All
|- Beach
|- Daytona
|- Beach Club
|- Hawaii
|- Mountains
|- Daytona
|- Places
|- Beach
|- Daytona
I've added to the categories:
"@All|Beach|Daytona": pic_1
"@All|Beach Club|Hawaii": pic_2
"@All|Mountains|Daytona": pic_3
"@All|Places|Beach|Daytona": pic_4
But when I enter in a new category the formula
@Category[@All|Beach|Daytona]it just returns pic_1. But the help says it should also return pic_2 ("@All|Beach Club|Hawaii"). And from my understanding it should also return pic_3 ("@All|Mountains|Daytona"). But it doesn't.
VarToy-app
The VarToy-app gives - at least to my understanding - a different result. When entering
{File.Categories|filter:@All|Beach|Daytona}it returns:
pic_1: Beach|Daytona -> correct
pic_2: Beach Club|Hawaii -> correct
pic_3: Mountains|Daytona -> correct
pic_4: Places|Beach|Daytona -> wrong (should be just empty / no result)
Thinking about your question, I am not sure anymore if the example in the help ist correct. From my understanding, @Category[@All|Beach|Daytona] should look for categories which contain "Beach" in their first level and, at the same time, "Daytona" in the second level. Thus, this expression should find "@All|Beach|Daytona" as well as "@All|Beach Club|Daytona Beach Club", but not "@All|Beach Club|Hawaii", because the second level does not match.
Regarding Vartoy: The filter expression is just a RegExp, so you will get all categories containing "Beach" or "Daytona" anywhere in the full category path. This is not directly comparable to the special handling in the @Category formula.
Hi Thorsten,
thanks for looking into this topic.
I think the question is if @Category[@All|Beach|Daytona] is:
- looking for "Beach" in first level AND "Daytona" in second level or
- looking for "Beach" in first level OR "Daytona" in second level
The help (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/cat_formulas.htm) says:
When you expression begins with @All, IMatch considers every level specified individually. To me that sounds like an
OR not an
AND.
Regarding your VarToy reply: I think it should be exactly the same behaviour, not differently. Why: The help (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/var_basics.htm) says:
The filter function allows you to filter the categories of a file by a regular expression, identical to the @Category[] category formula
Quote from: axel.hennig on September 09, 2022, 04:58:22 PMRegarding your VarToy reply: I think it should be exactly the same behaviour, not differently. Why: The help (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/var_basics.htm) says: The filter function allows you to filter the categories of a file by a regular expression, identical to the @Category[] category formula
I understand what you are saying. But
@Category[] has two different syntax variants, so to say: One where the argument starts with
@All, another one where the argument does not start with
@All. Vartoy behaves more like the second variant described here. (https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/cat_formulas.htm?dl=h-17)
I think the Hawaii example is wrong. I wrote that several years ago, so this is an old glitch.
I also think that IMatch works correctly.
You run a regexp on the following pattern:
@All|Beach|Daytona
which means that IMatch processes each level individually. So it first matches :
Beach
on all your top-level categories. Which finds two matches:
Beach|Daytona
Beach Club|Hawaii
Now it matches Daytona (next level down) against
Daytona
Hawaii
and the only match is Daytona of course. It would work when your categories are named:
Beach|Daytona
Beach Club|Daytona
or when your expression is something like:
"@Category[@All|Beach|.*]"
I shall update the help to fix this.
@Thorsten and Mario: Thanks for clarification.