Difference between revisions of "Find Dialog"

Revision as of 00:38, 25 May 2017

Note: Many aspects of the dialog described here are new to Analytica 5.0.

The Find dialog lets you search your model to find an object by its identifier, or for text in its title, description, or other text attributes. You can also search for system functions in the Application or online in this Analytica wiki.

You can open this dialog by selecting Find on the Object menu, or by pressing Ctrl+F. If you select an identifier or other text in a definition or other text in any attribute, and press Ctrl+F, it opens the Dialog with that text in the Search field.

in attribute menu: By default, it searches for an 'Identifier' which contains the search text. Use this menu to search for objects whose Title, Units, Description, Definition, or All text attributes contain the search text.

Case sensitive: Check if you want to match upper and lowercase. By default it ignores case.

Include system objects: Check if you want to include built-in functions and system variables in your search.

Regular expression: Check if you want to use wildcards and other options in your search string using regular expression are a very powerful matching options. Here are some of the most useful:

^Text: Find only objects starting with "Text". It excludes identifiers (or other attributes) like "IsText", which contains "Text" but doesn't start with that string.
Text$: Find objects with an identifier (or other attribute) that ends with the characters "text".
Va\d+ : Find identifiers with "Va" followed by one or more numeric digits, such as "Va1" or "Va13".
\bword\b: Finds "word" only when in appears as a whole word -- there must be a word boundary on each side.

Show matches with : When you check this, it tags each matching node in a Diagram with a magnifying glass object:

Buttons

Find: Open the first matching object. If there are more matches, you can visit them in turn by selecting Find Next from the Object menu, or press Ctrl+G.
List: Open a list of matches in the Outline window. From there you can double-click any item to open it in its Diagram.
on the Wiki: Opens a browser window and searches the Analytica Wiki online for the specified text. It ignores any attribute selection or checkbox options, including regular expression.

Find in Table

If you open the Find Dialog while viewing a table, it shows the Find in Table tab, which lets you search for text within the cells of the table:

Case sensitive: Select this for case-sensitive matching, so that upper and lower case must be as you type it.
Match entire cell: Select this to exclude finding the pattern within the text of a cell.

Table search does not work with regular expressions.

History

Analytica 4.0: Introduced Find in Table.
Analytica 4.6 and earlier: The Find Objects and Find-in-Table dialogs were separate. From a table, the option of searching for objects was not available. To search for objects while viewing a table, bring a non-table window into the foreground, then select Find.
Analytica 5.0: Introduced the Text option, the use of regular expressions, the option to depict the found set with a magnifying glass icon, the option to List matches in the Outline window, the combination of Find in Table and Find Objects in the same dialog, and the question mark button on the title bar that jumps to this page.

@@ Line 6: / Line 6: @@
-The Find dialog is accessed by selecting '''Find''' on the [[Object menu]], or by pressing ''Ctrl+F''. It can also be accessed from the '''Find''' button on the [[Object Finder dialog]]. If you access the Find dialog while viewing a table, a [[#Find in Table|Find in Table]] tab is present, which searches for text within the cells of the table.
+The Find dialog lets you search your model to find an object by its identifier, or for text in its title, description, or other text attributes. You can also search for system functions in the Application or online in this Analytica wiki.
+You can open this dialog by selecting '''Find''' on the [[Object menu]], or by pressing ''Ctrl+F''.  If you select an identifier or other text in a definition or other text in any attribute, and press  ''Ctrl+F'', it opens the Dialog with that text in the Search field.
 :[[image:Find Dialog.png]]
+'''in attribute menu''': By default, it searches for an 'Identifier' which contains the search text. Use this menu to search for objects whose Title, Units, Description, Definition, or All text attributes contain the search text.
-== Find Objects ==
+'''Case sensitive:''' Check if you want to match upper and lowercase. By default it ignores case.
-Select the '''Find Objects''' tab to search for objects within your model, or for system functions by name or pattern.  This will be the only option when you access the [[Find Dialog]] when not viewing a table.
-=== Search pattern ===
-Find will locate objects having the text you type anywhere within the '''Identifier''', '''Title''' or any textual attribute if you select '''Text'''. The search text is a [[regular expression]] (except when you search '''on the Wiki'''), so in addition to simple textual searches, you can use wildcards. Some useful ones include:
+'''Include system objects:''' Check if you want to include built-in functions and system variables in your search.
-* <code>^Text</code> : Find only objects starting with "Text". This would exclude cases where the letters "text" occur as a substring inside the identifier, title or text.
+'''Regular expression:'''  Check if you want to use wildcards and other options in your search string using [[regular expression]]  are a very powerful matching options. Here are some of the most useful:
+* <code>^Text</code>: Find only objects starting with "Text". It  excludes identifiers (or other attributes)  like "IsText", which contains "Text" but doesn't start with that string.
+* <code>Text$</code>: Find objects with an identifier (or other attribute) that ends with the characters "text".
 * <code>Va\d+</code> : Find identifiers with "Va" followed by one or more numeric digits, such as "Va1" or "Va13".
-*<code>Text$</code>: Find text ending with the characters "text".
+*
 *<code>\bword\b</code>: Finds "word" only when in appears as a whole word -- there must be a word boundary on each side.
-If you have some text selected when you bring up the [[Find Dialog]], the selected text is inserted into the text box for you.
+'''Show matches with [[image:magnifying glass.png]]''': When you check this, it tags each matching node in a Diagram with a magnifying glass object:
-All searches are case-insensitive.
-=== Attribute to search ===
-You can search by [[Identifier]], [[Title]] or '''Text'''. The attribute selection is ignored when you use '''on the Wiki'''. When you select '''Text''', all textual attributes are searched for the indicated text, including the [[Description]], [[Definition]], [[Units]], [[Title]], [[Identifier]], [[User-defined attributes]], etc.
-=== Show matches with [[image:magnifying glass.png]] ===
-When this is checked, objects in the "found set" will be tagged in the user-interface with a magnifying glass object, e.g.,
 :[[image:Found Set Sales model details.png]]
 === Buttons ===
-* '''Find''': Press this to jump to the first object matching your criteria. From there you can select '''Find Next''' on the [[Object menu]], or press ''Ctrl+G'', to visit the remaining matches.
+* '''Find''': Open the first matching object. If there are more matches, you can visit them in turn by selecting '''Find Next''' from the [[Object menu]], or press ''Ctrl+G''.
-* '''List''': Opens a list of matches in the [[Outline window]]. From there you can double-click on matches of interest.
+* '''List''': Open a list of matches in the [[Outline window]]. From there you can double-click any item to open it in its Diagram.
-* '''on the Wiki''': Opens a browser window and searches the Analytica Wiki for the indicated text.  The "found set" from the previous search is not changed.
+* '''on the Wiki''': Opens a browser window and searches the Analytica Wiki online for the specified text.  It ignores any attribute selection or checkbox options, including regular expression.
-* '''Cancel''': End the dialog without searching.
 == Find in Table ==
+If you open the  [[Find Dialog]] while viewing a table, it shows the [[#Find in Table|Find in Table]] tab, which lets you search for text within the cells of the table:
 :[[image:Find in Table.png]]
-These options appear when you bring up the [[Find Dialog]] while viewing a table. This searches for the indicated text within the cells of the table.  The search text is literal text, not a [[regular expression]].
 * '''Case sensitive''': Select this for case-sensitive matching, so that upper and lower case must be as you type it.
 * '''Match entire cell''': Select this to exclude finding the pattern within the text of a cell.
+Table search does not work with [[regular expression|regular expressions]].
 == History ==
@@ Line 61: / Line 49: @@
 == See Also ==
 * [[Object Finder dialog]]
-* [[FindObjects]] function
+* [[FindObjects]] function lets you write an expression that searches the model.
 * [[Find variables and other objects]]
 * [[Outline window]]
 * [[Regular Expressions]]