Greasy Fork

Question about word filter

Hi man, i have used your script for more than 2 years now, and i have to say that i love it. I simply want you to know that you saved me a lot of time :smile: . Now to the question:

I use the Slash filter you made to hide all the Self Insert stories that plague Fanfiction. The problem is that i cant put in the filter "SI" because it fill hide any word with "si" inside (ej:SImple). Is there a way to only hide complete words?

Is there a way to only hide complete words?

Yes. It uses a regular expression ("regex" or "regexp" for short), which is flexible enough.

The computer doesn't understand what a complete word is, so you need to describe what you're looking for in very simple terms.

For example, this might work:

[^a-zA-Z]SI([^a-zA-Z]|$)

Here's how it works:

• [^a-zA-Z] means "Match one character that's not in the ranges a-z or A-Z"
• SI means "Match the literal string SI"
• $ means "end of the string" when not inside [...]
• (...|...) means "either of these things"

So that pattern should match "SI" when it has something that's not a letter before it (eg. a space or slash) and when it either has something that's not a letter after it or it's at the end of the string.

Another way that might work is this:

[ /]SI([ /]|$)

...which means "either a space or a / followed by SI followed by a space, /, or the end of the description".

• [...] means "one of these characters" so [ /] means "one space or /".

...so ([ /]|$) means "Either [ /] (space or /) or $ (end of string)"

Here's a tutorial for regular expressions and you can use https://regex101.com/ to test them out without having to constantly reload the page. (Just choose "ECMAScript (JavaScript)" mode in the sidebar.)

One thing does worry me though. I think I wrote my script to ignore uppercase/lowercase distinctions, and the post notification took me to the Spanish view of this thread when I clicked the link.

I'm not sure if the script can currently be configured to match "SI" (short for self-insert) but not "si", the Spanish conjunction and word for "yes".

(I designed it that way because "slash" gets capitalized all sorts of different ways.)

Thanks for the fast, in-depth explanation!!! Really happy to learn something new from a kind stranger of the internet. About your concern about the spanish word "si", do not worry. Despite being from Argentina, i only read fics in english (the spanish fandom is really small, and in the case that i would like to read something in spanish, i can filter them myself without problem).

Thanks for being so considerate, y saludos desde Argentina amigo mio.

No problem. I enjoy helping people out.

As for English-language fanfiction, in case any of the fandoms you like are also fandoms I like, you might want to check out some of the other ways I try to give back to the community.

I have a blog where I review fanfiction, a quote randomizer with links to the stories where I found them, I used to do "micro-reviews" on Identi.ca and Twitter back around 2013, and I maintain a faves list on Fanfiction.net where I collect fics that meet a certain minimum standard of enjoyability.)

...just be aware that:

1. Fanfiction.net's display of faves lists is currently "temporarily" limited to 500 on the desktop view, so you have to go to the mobile view to see all 1544 of mine.
2. The "infinite scrolling" pagination on the newest version of Identi.ca is buggy so you need to keep going up and then back down to get it to load more entries.

Actually, now that I think about it, feel free to use the contact form on my blog to start a conversation about fanfiction. I'm already in a chat channel dedicated to recommending things to people and I'm also curious about what specific aspects of SIs you don't like. (eg. Is it possible I know some SIs that you'd like despite them being SIs or is that an impossibility?)

Sure man, I will hit you in your blog (technically i already did)