The powerful, highly-customizable categorization-engine AutoCat is one of the features that makes Tiller unique.
Many users have built filters using familiar criteria like Contains
.
More advanced users have experimented with filters like Starts With
, Ends With
or Max
and Min
.
But the Regex
filter stands apart for only the most adventurous.
Regex is short for regular expression. It’s kind of a programming language for pattern matching, making it a great fit for complex AutoCat filters that cannot be realized with basic rules.
A warning before we delve deeper…! Regex filters can be fussy— like really fussy!— and frustrating. If you don’t have the time, patience or persistence to run them to ground, I recommend sticking with the basic filter types. If you need help with a regex filter, ask if someone in the community can help.
There are some great tutorials on the web— like this one or this one— that go through the basics of regex. Essentially, a special set of anchors, quantifiers and special characters allow you to encode pattern matching logic.
Regex Examples
-
til{2}er
- contains the word “tiller” -
(feeds|tiller money)
- contains “feeds” or “tiller money” -
(amazon|amzn|kindle)
- contains “amazon” or “amzn” or “kindle” -
^Transfer
- starts with “transfer” -
Transfer$
- ends with “transfer” -
(^|\s)(Sat|Saturday|Sun|Sunday)($|\s)
- contains " Sat " or " Saturday " or " Sun " or " Sunday " with either leading/trailing whitespace or start-of-line/end-of-line
Do You Regex?
Let us know if you use regex filters with Autocat!
If so, what is your favorite regex filter application?
Notes
- Tiller’s regex filter criteria are case insensitive.
- Regex is only supported for AutoCat for Google Sheets at this time