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### A.11.5 Column Search Window

Column Search window

The Column Search window lets you search through the values in a chosen column to find occurrences of some particular text. It can be obtained using the Search Column () action from the Data Window in one of two ways: either using the toolbar button or menu item, in which case you have to choose the column of interest using the selector, or using the popup menu that appears when you right-click on a column, in which case the column in question is selected automatically.

To perform a search, ensure that the column selector is filled in with the column you want to search, fill in the matching options, enter the text to search for, and hit the Search button. Any rows matching the query are highlighted in the Data Window, and the display is scrolled so that the first match, if any, is visible. If exactly one matching row was found, it is also activated. You can see how many matches there were from the Selected value indicated at the bottom of the Data Window. If at least one match is found, the search window usually closes (though this can be prevented with the Stay Open () option).

The fields to fill in are as follows:

Column:
  The column whose cell values will be matched against. This may be filled in automatically (if you open the window using the column popup menu), or you can select a column by hand.
Syntax:
  Controls the way that the search text is interpreted:
  - Wildcard: basic string matching with two special characters; "`*`" matches any sequence of characters, and "`?`" matches any single character
  - Literal: no special characters; the strings must match exactly
  - Regex: uses the powerful regular expression matching syntax
Scope:
  Determines which part of the cell text has to match the search text:
  - Contains: the search text has to appear somewhere in the cell content
  - Complete: the search text has to match the whole of the cell content
Case Sensitive:
  If checked, matching is case-sensitive, otherwise, upper/lower case discrepancies are ignored.
Search Text:
  The text to match cell values in the given column according to the constraints defined by the other controls.

The Search button will only be enabled if the controls specify a legal search condition. If for instance the search text is empty, or Regex syntax is chosen and the search text is not a legal regular expression, it will be disabled.

The search will usually complete straight away, but if the table is very long it may take a significant amount of time. In this case progress is displayed with the progress bar at the bottom of the window, and you can interrupt the running search using the Stop button.

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TOPCAT - Tool for OPerations on Catalogues And Tables
Starlink User Note253
TOPCAT web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/topcat/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk
Mailing list: topcat-user@jiscmail.ac.uk