string
======

.. note::

    This target doesn't match any syntactical elements. It is used as an option from another
    target. In case you want to search for strings in code, take a look at :doc:`literal`.

Sensei allows for both a very simple and very advanced configuration to match text.

.. contents::

Shorthands
----------

As stated before, we can use a very simple string-based configuration to match text. We call these
configurations *shorthands*.

.. code-block:: yaml
    :emphasize-lines: 3

    search:
      <target>:
        <option>: Example



Advanced configuration
----------------------

These shorthand notations are insufficient in certain scenarios. That's why Sensei allows to configure
the text-matching in a similar fashion as configuring a target.

.. _string_is:

is
~~

Performs an equality check. Only configuring this option behaves the same as using the shorthand
notation.

.. code-block:: yaml

    search:
      <target>:
        <option>:
          is: "Example"

.. _string_matches:

matches
~~~~~~~

Performs a regular expression match.

.. code-block:: yaml

    search:
      <target>:
        <option>:
          matches: "Ex.*"


.. _string_contains:

contains
~~~~~~~~

Checks if the text contains a certain substring.

.. code-block:: yaml

    search:
      <target>:
        <option>:
          contains: "Ex"

.. include:: /ref/targets/partials/searcher.txt