Can I use regular expressions on column filters?

Question

I want to be able to filter the list of results to a file name beginning with a certain name. The column filters seem to match any text in the file name, not just the start. For example, I have a list of files:

NY Skyline.jpg
Too many cats.jpg
Fine wine.jpg

If I use the column filter NY I'll get:

NY Skyline.jpg
Too many cats.jpg

The second file Too many cats.jpg is matched because of the 'ny' in 'many'.

If I could use a regular expression I could use an expression like ^NY to match just the start of the file name.

Answer 1

Yes you can use regular expressions on column filters but you don't need to in this instance. The column filters are Boolean based so you can just use the expression: <NY>

The '<' matches the start of the word, just like '>' matches the end of the word.

However, if you really want to restrict the file to where 'NY' only appears at the start of the file name you can use a regular expression by prefixing it with the operator REGEX, e.g.

REGEX "^NY"

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Column Filter Example

Narrowing down search results for all songs with the word 'You' in them:

Column Filter with Regular Expression

Using a regular expression we can show just those files that start with the word 'You' after the track number: