(Archived) Special Characters in Tags

[Bryan Sullo 5]

I believe this topic is cross-platform.

I have searched the forum for similar topics, and have not found it.

 

It appears that using certain characters in tags breaks the search feature. For example, if I create tags such as "Household-Bills", "Household-Heating", "Household-Projects", etc. and I want to see all "Household" items, I can search like this:

 

tag:Household*

 

However, if I have some tags like "To-Visit (Indoors)", "To-Visit (Outdoors)", "To-Visit (Free)", and I want to search for all "To-Visit" tags, I cannot. None of these syntaxes returns the expected results:

 

tag:To-Visit*

tag:"To-Visit*"

tag:"To-Visit"*

 

Similarly, using spaces in tags hampers the search feature as well.

 

Since the nesting of tags has no functional benefits for searching (which it should), this is the only method for making hierarchical tags.

 

After all that, my question is, what characters used in tags will not break the search feature? I'd like to use something as a delimiting character. I realize I can do tags like "HouseholdBills" or "ToVisitIndoor" but I'd prefer more readability than that.

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

I believe this topic is cross-platform.

I have searched the forum for similar topics, and have not found it.

It appears that using certain characters in tags breaks the search feature. For example, if I create tags such as "Household-Bills", "Household-Heating", "Household-Projects", etc. and I want to see all "Household" items, I can search like this:

tag:Household*

However, if I have some tags like "To-Visit (Indoors)", "To-Visit (Outdoors)", "To-Visit (Free)", and I want to search for all "To-Visit" tags, I cannot. None of these syntaxes returns the expected results:

tag:To-Visit*

tag:"To-Visit*"

tag:"To-Visit"*

Similarly, using spaces in tags hampers the search feature as well.

Since the nesting of tags has no functional benefits for searching (which it should), this is the only method for making hierarchical tags.

After all that, my question is, what characters used in tags will not break the search feature? I'd like to use something as a delimiting character. I realize I can do tags like "HouseholdBills" or "ToVisitIndoor" but I'd prefer more readability than that.

http://discussion.evernote.com/topic/36345-hyphenated-searches-are-broken/

However, IME, spaces in tags work fine as long as the tag name is enclosed in quotes.

As to whether or not nesting tags should have "functional benefits for searching", that would simply be your opinion, not a fact.

[jefito 5,598]

I'm pretty sure that '-' is ok to use; a lot of people use it.

So I just tried this under Windows, with a test case of tags "test-test1", "test-test2", and "test-test3" (imaginative, I know). A search on test-test* found all notes tagged with any of these tags, so that does work as expected.

For your use case, it might be useful to open up the search Explanation panel (View / Show Search Explanation) and report what it thinks that Evernote is searching for when you search on tag:To-Visit* or any of yoru other problematic queries.

Not sure about the space separator; I'm running out of time to test this morning...

[BurgersNFries 2,407]

IME, spaces work fine in tags, as long as the tag name is enclosed in quotes.

[Bryan Sullo 5]

 

As to whether or not nesting tags should have "functional benefits for searching", that would simply be your opinion, not a fact.

 

 

I never presented it as anything but.

[Bryan Sullo 5]

My apologies. On 

 

I'm pretty sure that '-' is ok to use; a lot of people use it.

So I just tried this under Windows, with a test case of tags "test-test1", "test-test2", and "test-test3" (imaginative, I know). A search on test-test* found all notes tagged with any of these tags, so that does work as expected.

For your use case, it might be useful to open up the search Explanation panel (View / Show Search Explanation) and report what it thinks that Evernote is searching for when you search on tag:To-Visit* or any of yoru other problematic queries.

Not sure about the space separator; I'm running out of time to test this morning...

Thank you. On the strength of your findings, I went back and tested again. It appears it does work after all, without quotes. I must have been conflating trying a wildcard search for a tag with a space (where quotes are necessary) and a wildcard search for a tag with a hyphen (where, apparently, quotes are not necessary).

Sorry for the confusion.

[jefito 5,598]

My apologies. On 

 

I'm pretty sure that '-' is ok to use; a lot of people use it.

So I just tried this under Windows, with a test case of tags "test-test1", "test-test2", and "test-test3" (imaginative, I know). A search on test-test* found all notes tagged with any of these tags, so that does work as expected.

For your use case, it might be useful to open up the search Explanation panel (View / Show Search Explanation) and report what it thinks that Evernote is searching for when you search on tag:To-Visit* or any of yoru other problematic queries.

Not sure about the space separator; I'm running out of time to test this morning...

Thank you. On the strength of your findings, I went back and tested again. It appears it does work after all, without quotes. I must have been conflating trying a wildcard search for a tag with a space (where quotes are necessary) and a wildcard search for a tag with a hyphen (where, apparently, quotes are not necessary).

Sorry for the confusion.

The Search Explanation panel continues to be a useful tool in debugging queries. Hopefully it sticks around (there was some discussion in the V5 betas that it might be removed). Interesting to see if (or how) it still works when the impending natural language search hits the Windows client.

 

Anyways, I think that non-space (and non-quote, duh!) characters should work with respect to tag names, unquoted, but the query language is ambiguous with respect to plain text search items following tag terms (they aren't introduced with a special token like 'tag:'), so that's why you need quotes in that case.