Topic: [Feature] Parenthetical Searching

Posted under Site Bug Reports & Feature Requests

For tag searches, allow a sub-search of sorts and filter based around that along with normal tags

ex. Let's say I wanted to exclude posts that had both "Male" and "Solo" from my search, but I was still open to seeing both "Male" or "Solo" separately, the search would be something along the lines of "-(Male Solo)" followed by the rest of the search

I think it's pretty niche, but there's definitely been times where I wish it was a thing. I'm not sure if it'd be very easy to implement, but there's no harm in suggesting it.

braveopeak said:
For tag searches, allow a sub-search of sorts and filter based around that along with normal tags

ex. Let's say I wanted to exclude posts that had both "Male" and "Solo" from my search, but I was still open to seeing both "Male" or "Solo" separately, the search would be something along the lines of "-(Male Solo)" followed by the rest of the search

I think it's pretty niche, but there's definitely been times where I wish it was a thing. I'm not sure if it'd be very easy to implement, but there's no harm in suggesting it.

I second this. Iv needed this more then once and it would be nice to have

I like your idea, but the problem with parentheses is that many tags use them. Maybe another character? Maybe an escape character before the parentheses?

it's been raised before. Unlikely because of the amount of complexity it adds to searching code.
Does anyone know of an actual example of this being implemented in a booru-like site?

savageorange said:
it's been raised before. Unlikely because of the amount of complexity it adds to searching code.
Does anyone know of an actual example of this being implemented in a booru-like site?

I've only seen it in galleries like FurAffinity and Pixiv.

As a hack you can temporarily add male solo to your blacklist. Or have the site do it for you if you try using the syntax you wanted (-(male solo))

electricitywolf said:
I like your idea, but the problem with parentheses is that many tags use them. Maybe another character? Maybe an escape character before the parentheses?

No tag existing right now uses ( as its first character. That could play into the solution above, but again, ) may be interpreted as a tag end or the end of the negated group.

While this would certainly be nice to have, I unfortunately don't have the time to get something like this done anytime soon.

savageorange said:
Does anyone know of an actual example of this being implemented in a booru-like site?

I think Danbooru implemented this recently, but then again you can only search two tags at once with a basic account.

earlopain said:
I think Danbooru implemented this recently, but then again you can only search two tags at once with a basic account.

wait seriously? only 2?! damn...

versperus said:
e6 was limited to 6 until just a couple years ago

I mean but still, 2?!?
And I vaguely remember getting that error message of "too many tag searches, please try again with fewer tags"

electricitywolf said:
I like your idea, but the problem with parentheses is that many tags use them. Maybe another character? Maybe an escape character before the parentheses?

Square brackets ?

-[male solo]

But then what would be the meaning of a non-negated group?

[male solo] meaning "male OR solo" ?
-[male solo] meaning "NOT male AND solo" ?

kamril said:
Square brackets ?

-[male solo]

But then what would be the meaning of a non-negated group?

[male solo] meaning "male OR solo" ?
-[male solo] meaning "NOT male AND solo" ?

Hey, that would emulate my ( Totodile | Croconaw | Feraligatr ) ( Chikorita | Bayleef | Meganium ) search from FurAffinity. I like running "Evolutionary pairing" searches like that.

Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about parenthesis being used in tag searches normally, I agree square brackets make more sense

savageorange said:
it's been raised before. Unlikely because of the amount of complexity it adds to searching code.
Does anyone know of an actual example of this being implemented in a booru-like site?

Sites based on Philomena (derpibooru, furbooru, etc) have this, and it works extremely well.

For the parenthesis used in tags issue, the search can treat opening parenthesis that start in the middle of a tag as part of the tag, as well as the the next closing parenthesis after that. Escaping could be done in the rare cases where tags start with a parenthesis or don't have balanced parenthesis

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