Pattern Matching subtleties in new URL search [Fixed 3.5.1 b878 pre-release]

[rossbennett]

I almost didn't post this as a bug, because I'll leave it to Alfred's parents to decide.  It's quite possible a "behavior subtlety" which has "evolved."

 

But on the chance it was an unintended change:

 

Build 875, Monday 25th September 2017, although this seems to have been a behavior since the new bookmark search behavior instead of something peculiar to this build.

 

I'm still holding off on installing High Sierra until we get the all-clear with Adobe Illustrator and a few production tools. So this is in the current Sierra.

 

For a long time I've organized browser bookmarks using full names and unique abbreviations in parentheses, e.g.

• National Hurricane Center (NHC)
• Storm Prediction Center (SPC)
• National Weather Service (NWS)

 

Then I would recall such things using the abbreviation.  "<Search box> NHC " or "<Search box> SPC"

 

In earlier versions, the search would return links including the above examples. In the current version, the pattern does not return as a match unless I also type the first parenthesis.

 

Now required: "<Search box> (NHC" or "<Search box> (SPC"

 

I don't know that I have any objection to this, but I mention it in case it was unintended.  Or perhaps the unlikely case where it has changed the way a script behaves.

 

I certainly don't mind changing my scheme if the new behavior is preferred.  :-)

 

Thanks very much for the ongoing improvements and support of Alfred!

[Andrew]

@rossbennett this is essentially a behavioural changed caused by switching from using the OS X metadata to search bookmarks over to indexing bookmarks internally (as in High Sierra, there is no longer metadata for bookmarks).

 

The new bookmarks feature in Alfred was partly borne out of necessity, and brought in later in the macOS 10.13 beta cycle than I usually like (as I had hoped that the missing bookmark metadata was just a macOS bug).

 

As such, this feature is still young, and has some improvements in the pipeline which should better restore the behaviour you are expecting... This will be sooner rather than later

 

Cheers,

Andrew

[rossbennett]

Splendid!  Sounds like you're way ahead of us, per usual!  :-)  I'll just roll with it as it evolves.  Thanks!

[Andrew]

@rossbennett if you grab this beta build: http://cachefly.alfredapp.com/scratch/Alfred_3.5.1_878.dmg the pattern matching should be better

 

Note that this is essentially an untested beta build, but should work fine.

 

Cheers,

Andrew