Keyword search | whole word only option

[Jerry and Lois Photo]

Hello,

Running build ver5.0/19695 of PM, on Win 10/64.

I am re-assigning keywords on a few thousand files (NEFs, TIF, PSD).  To test how I've set up keywords, I'm finding that PM's search does not appear to offer the option for whole words only, thus giving me unwanted results.

Example: 
I have 500 photos of animals.  Some that are of dogs, others that are whales, other that are birds, insects, horses, etc.  If I want to find all the non-dog images, I need to use a keyword that indicates non-dog.

For the images:
Dog only images have a keyword of "dog".
Non-dog images have a keyword of "non-dog", along with "whale" OR "bird" OR "insect" or...

If I search using the term "dog", the results are both dog and non-dog images; i.e. the entire set of images.  If there's a way to search with whole words only, then non-dogs would work.

Hoping this simple search option is present, but I'm just not seeing it.

Many thanks,
Jerry

[Graham1]

There has recently been a thread about whole word only search, or search and replace.  In my example, I replaced "Europe" and was left with a load of stubs "an" for what had previously been "European", a very unwelcome result.

There is a work around I have found.  The search function searches for an exact string.  Keywords are separated by a comma and a space.  If, therefore, you search for the word or expression you want, including the leading and trailing commas and the leading space, you can get the exact phrase or word you want.  Thus a search for (without the quotes) ", dog, " would bring up "dog" but not "non-dog".  Similarly if you search for ", non-dog," this would not pick up only "dog".

This usually works, but you have to bear in mind that the first of your keywords (alphabetically, or if preceded by a number) is not actually preceded by a comma or a space, and the last one is not terminated by a comma or space, so you have to think it through to get the right result.

This is a workaround for now, but I do hope that the long awaited version 6 will allow whole word searching as a proper option rather than having to resort to a fix like this.

Hope that helps.  By the way, one would never suggest altering someone's keywording to suit a particular programme, but "non-dog" for any animal that is not a dog does seem, shall we say, a little unusual.  Is it not obvious that a whale is not a dog? 

Graham

[Kirk Baker]

I am re-assigning keywords on a few thousand files (NEFs, TIF, PSD).  To test how I've set up keywords, I'm finding that PM's search does not appear to offer the option for whole words only, thus giving me unwanted results.

There is currently no option to Find and Replace on whole words only.

-Kirk

[Jerry and Lois Photo]

Graham1, thank you for the thoughtful reply.

You've given me some good things to incorporate.  If handy, would you please share a link to the thread you mentioned?

While we've been shooting full-time since 2004, our keyword strategy has always been flimsy at best (relying on memory and the project database to locate files).  In the years prior, we shot a lot of dog related projects (probably close to 700K raw images).  But since then, many many other projects with animals of all kinds have shown up.  There are times in which we need to quickly find non-dog related images, but we can't remember other keywords that may have been applied to those files, making a direct targeted search a bit flimsy.  Using the "non-dog" would help split out animal related photos into a remainder.

Thanks again...
Jerry