Sexp-string

Come get your sexp strings. Sexp strings going once, sexp string going twice...

Motivation

I Wanted to have a convenient way to write elisp expressions as a string. Keeping track of parenthesises doesn't make for a good user interface. Based on org-ql's method.

What it does

Convert to and from a string to a boolean elisp expression.

For example,

"tag:tag1,tag2 title:title1,title2 query1 query2 `or `(query3 `and query4 `) query5 (to be, or not to be? to not be!)"

matches the following under this predicate.

(and
 (or
  (and (tag "tag1" "tag2")
       (title "title1" "title2")
       (both "query1")
       (both "query2"))
  (and (both "query3")
       (both "query4")))
 (both "query5")
 (both "(" "to")
 (both "be" ",")
 (both "or")
 (both "not")
 (both "to")
 (both "be "?" ".")
 (both "to")
 (both "not")
 (both "be" "!" ")"))

Usage

look at how org-roam-search uses sexp-string. The key functions are

• sexp-string--query-string-to-sexp
• sexp-string--query-sexp-to-string
• sexp-string--transform-query

Features

Custom pexs

Two syntaxs are currently supported. org-ql like syntax called sexp-string--custom-pexs.

• , between args after predicates is and.
• `or is or.
• `and is and.
• `(`) are brackets.
• ! is negation.
• E.g "tag:tag1,tag2 title:title1,title2 query1 query2 `or `(query3 `and query4 `) query5 (to be, or not to be? to not be!)"

recoll like syntax (also Notmuch (Xapian) and Xesam) called sexp-string--recoll-pexs.

• , between args in predicates is and.
• / between args in predicates is or.
• OR is or.
• AND is and.
• () are brackets.
• - is negation.
• E.g "tag:tag1,tag2/tag3 OR title:title1,title2 query1 query2 OR (query3 AND query4) query5 \"(to be, or not to be? to not be!)\""

Look at sexp-string--custom-pexs to define your own.

Featured downstream packages

• org-roam-search.
• firefox-search.
• delve-show.

I know I know, these are all my packages. I don't know any one that uses this package yet.