Wildcards in WidgetLocator

[a.bitsche]

Is it possible to use the character '*' in a label for a WidgetLocator?

In most texteditors the label of the textwindow is equal to the name of the opened file. If the textfile is dirty a '*' is added at the beginning of the label.

If i try to register a new widget with the label '*test' i get this err-log:
java.util.regex.PatternSyntaxException: Dangling meta character '*' near index 0
*test
^
at java.util.regex.Pattern.error(Unknown Source)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.sequence(Unknown Source)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.expr(Unknown Source)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.compile(Unknown Source)
at java.util.regex.Pattern.<init>(Unknown Source)
...

Is it possible to use Wildcards for names or labels in the WidgetLocator?

[Phil Quitslund]

Nice catch!

This is actually a bug that has been fixed (you should be able to use literals and patterns in widget locators) and will available in a fresh beta posted in the next few days.

In the meantime, you can escape the metacharacter using a pattern like this:

"\\*test"

[a.bitsche]

Tank you for your help!

And how does it look like with wildcards?
Can i use wildcards in a WidgetLocator or is there another
way to get access to an object if the hole name (label) isn't known?

[Phil Quitslund]

We use the standard pattern matcher provided by Java. For more on it, see:

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api ... ttern.html

As for your particular case, a WidgetLocator that uses this pattern:

"(\\*)?test"

for example

Code: Select all

new WidgetLocator("(\\*)?test", Label.class);

should match a Label instance whose text is "test" or "*test".