Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2024 May 28

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May 28

How to search for fake references (in SparQL or with other methods)

In SparQL, how can I search for stuff like this. So it would start with an opening square bracket, then a number of up to 3 digits, then a closing square bracket.

Is there a way to do this via the normal search box? Is there another, better way? Thanks! Polygnotus (talk) 04:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm not familiar with SparQL, but a regular expression that will serve for a search in most query pattern syntaxes is:

\[[0-9]+\]

Thus will also match "[2024]". If 3 is a hard limit on number of digits, this might work:

\[([1-9]|[1-9][0-9]|[1-9][0-9][0-9])\]

 --Lambiam 10:13, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. I think that the problem is that the article content itself is not on Wikidata, which means I have to try a different approach. It seems like the search function also does not like regex. So I may have to download a dump and use regex. Polygnotus (talk) 11:24, 28 May 2024 (UTC)