I took at look at this, and the Equality Modifier doesn't work the way it's supposed to. At a quick glance, using the "equality modifier" in a text query combined with "match query to each line in file" seem to be the regex equivalant of '^' and '$'.
Supposedly, you can search
="cats and dogs" and it'll match
cats and dogs exactly.
I decided to post my findings here in case it would help you narrow down the issue.
I made a file called "test 01.txt", which contains:
start cats and dogs
cats and dogs
AAAAAcats and dogsAAAAA
_cats and dogs_
12345cats and dogs12345
#####cats and dogs#####
cats and dogs end
I had several test cases. Case 1 seems to be bugged.
Case 1: text query + match query to entire file
="cats and dogs"
This query wasn't able to find any text at all in "test 01.txt", surprisingly. This result seems to indicate the equality modifier isn't working properly with these particular settings. The only way I got the equality modifier to work is to use text query with "match query to each line in file"
Case 2: text query + match query to each line in file
="cats and dogs"
Whenever I use "match query to each line in file", fileseek seems to go through each line to see if there's an exact match on that line. It matches just a single line: the line that exactly matches
cats and dogs . (line 2 in the text file.)
Text query + match query to each line in file will only match lines that have exactly
cats and dogs on the line. If there is other text on that particular line, the query won't match
cats and dogs. I don't know if this behavior is correct, but I'll assume that's how it's supposed to work.
Case 3: regex query + match query to entire file
\bcats and dogs\b
This query matches every line since all of them
contain cats and dogs. This result is expected behavior.
There are 2 ways (that I know of) to do string matching: string matching per string, or string matching per line.
Case 2 seems to be similar to the regex equivalent of '^' and '$'. Case 2 searches the entire line for a match. '^' and '$' matches according to the entire line.
^cats and dogs$ would match
lines that match exactly
cats and dogs, but nothing more.
Case 3 is the regex equivalent of '\b'. Case 3 searches the string you enter for zero-width "word" boundaries. '\b' matches according to
words on the line.
\bcats and dogs\b would match
words cats and dogs on a line that like
start cats and dogs (line 1 in the text file)
