Filtering Enhancements

Alan_B

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but would it possible to have wildcard and pattern options when filtering. Yes I'm aware that verbs like "contains" can be used but this is sometimes not enough to cut the rubbish we have to put up with!

Andre

You can use the regex option which allows you to do powerful filtering.
You won't find anything more powerful than regex.

I am aware that regex needs a learning curve, but I can help you a bit to start if you like.
Or use google. There are so many examples out there.

Alan_B

I'll investigate regex first - I have heard of it but never used it. If I need help - which I probably will - I will ask you. Thank you 🙂

Andre

A simple regex example:

You want to filter a user with email:
spamposter@us.google.invalid

but not:
spamposter@nl.google.invalid

also not:
spamposter@us.google.invalid.com

also not:
posterspam@us.google.invalid

then use something like this:
^spam.*@us.*invalid$

^ = starts with
.* means any character
$ = ends with phrase (is "invalid" here)

Alan_B

I will try some experiments later. Thanks 😄

Cubelonimbus

Hi, I’m using Regex now (with the help of https://regex101.com)
Example: poster UhV7K@UOVA240124.3P4 seems not to be caught by regex expression ^.*\..{3}$

What could be the reason?

Andre

There is probably some text at the front or back.
Try this:

\b.*\..{3}\b

Cubelonimbus

Interesting suggestion, did add it to the regex filters but to no avail. The posts still come through.

Andre

Can you send me the message-ID of such article?

Andre

Thanks for the email.
If you change the ‘Apply to:’ field to ‘Files and messages’, the rule works fine.
The items you mentioned that are not filtered are probably files.

Cubelonimbus

That worked. No sporge in the posts anymore.
I’ll keep doing some further tests over the coming days as the way regex filtering works it won’t tell me if there was nothing to filter to begin with. I can only see nothing shows now.
Would be nice if regex filtering would work also after downloading headers, but I’m not pushing it.