On Tue, 06 Feb 2024 13:31:38 -0500, Charlie Roberts wrote:
> User-Agent: ForteAgent/8.00.32.1272
>
> Sorry to confess that after poring over all the
> Jim Bradley pages, older saved posts on filters,
> etc., I am unable to create a lsimple kill filter.
>
>
> I would like to ask how to do the following (simple?!)
> task. How does one eliminate (i.e. kill) posts from
> all but a few select posters?
>
> Suppose there are five posters Abel Bro, Chill
> Drop, Ellie Fritz, George Hall and Ingio Jacob
> that I want to see and kill the rest. What is
> the filter? An explanation would be nice.
Try this:
not Author: ( "Abel Bro" or "Chill Drop" or "Ellie Fritz" or "George Hall" or "Ingio Jacob" )
> I tried all sorts of things for a single poster and
> even they failed -- did not wrong thing or it was
> a syntax error.
>
> Author: ^Peter -- simply killed everything, including
> all of Peter's posts.
This filter is the same as writing
Author: Peter
The ^ character will have no effect here in a word-based expression
filter. In a word-based expression, the ^ is treated as part of the
space between words. The word-based expression ^Peter does *not*
mean 'not Peter'.
For the places where the ^ character does have a special meaning, see
the footnote further below.
> Varitations like Author: not(Peter) did not fly at all.
Make that one of these...
not Author: (Peter)
Author: (not Peter)
See: Help >> Index >> Filters, Message Filters >> Agent's Expression Language
> Same with Auhtor: !Peter
Make that one of these...
!Author: Peter
Author: (!Peter)
> Thanks for your help.
____
FOOTNOTE
In filter expressions, there are two places where the ^ character has
a special meaning. The meaning is quite different in each case.
1. Inside the {...} curly braces of a regular expression filter,
where ^ represents the beginning of the field.
For example, the expression
Author: {^Peter}
will match a message where the "From:" field *begins* with Peter.
See: Help >> Index >> Expressions >> Regular Expressions Reference >> Rules for Writing Regular Expressions >> The ^ (carat) character, which matches the beginning of the field being tested.
2. Immediately after the [ left square bracket of a [...] range
inside a {...} regular expression. If a range begins with a ^
character, it matches any single character not in the specified
range.
For example, the expression
Author: {P[^ae]ter}
will match P%ter, P&ter, P*ter, Pbter, Pcter, Pdter, Pfter, etc.,
but not Pater or Peter. The range [^ae] will match any single
character which is not 'a' or 'e'.
The ^ does not negate which words match, so it *cannot* be used to
say the author is not Peter. It only applies to matching a single
character in a specified range.
See: Help >> Index >> Expressions >> Regular Expressions Reference >> Rules for Writing Regular Expressions >> A "range" of characters, enclosed in [...] square brackets.
--
Kind regards
Ralph Fox
🦊
All's lost that's put in a riven dish.