MediaMonkey forum

Entering ";" in the search bar fails to find a literal ; character in the Artist field.

E.g. with a track having Artist value

literal;inartist

entering

inartist

finds it but entering

;inartist

does not.

(Help, topic Search says

Use qoutes around text to specify an exact match.

)

This is currently by design, ';' isn't considered to be a part of artist title. However, this will probably change in future versions when MM will improve support for multiple artists (as discussed in other threads here).

Jiri

Aren't you just missing a <space> after ;?

; inartist

> ';' isn't considered to be a part of artist title.

1) MM sure does consider part of the artist value when it displays it on track list and Properties.
2) it worked fine before the multiple artist messups of recent versions.
3) Current failure fails to accord with the docs.

Er, no - there is no space in the target string.

I can't add more here, simply ';' currently separates multiple artists and isn't part of artist title (only denotes a connection between individual artists). I understand that it can cause problems in some special cases and as I wrote, improvements are being discussed in other threads.

Jiri

> I can't add more here, simply ';' currently separates multiple artists
> and isn't part of artist title

Jiri, nowhere search defined to search the "artist title", whatever that is.

The user reasonably expectes that search searches the field(s) it says it is going to search. If the track list shows a value for Artist, then searching Artist for that value should find that track. Anything else is crazy. If MM starts making random undocumented exceptions like this, the user will never be able to trust the search feature.

> improvements are being discussed in other threads.

MM's special interpretation of ';' as an artist separator should having nothing to do with search. I.e. the special ';' interpretation made by the Artist /node/ should not interefe with the proper operation of search. Search's exclusion of ';' gives the user no advantage, and considerable disadvantage.

Note that, even though I don't think it's an excuse, WMP11 works the very same way. As I wrote, improvements are being prepared, probably for MM 3.1.

Jiri

jiri, Explorer shell (Vista) & the latest version of foobar2000 also use semi-colon as a separator in the UI now. You are not alone.

Go ahead and support user configurable UI separators, though, if that will make everyone happy. But I prefer the "keep it simple" and "keep in consistent" ethic.

> As I wrote, improvements are being prepared

I see nothing written by you to suggest improvements to restore the search functionality. If such are planned, great.