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I'd like to search for phrases using regular expressions on sites such as Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Is it possible to do this?

Example regex search query: (facebook|google) (corporate history|websites)

It's already possible to do the same on Google (as demonstrated here), so I want to know whether it's possible for Wikipedia as well.

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Would you be willing to download several gigabytes of data and do all of the filtering on your own computer? – svick Aug 2 '12 at 19:46
It appears that is possible to do this using AutoWikiBrowser: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/… – Anderson Green Aug 2 '12 at 19:46
You can use AWB to search a certain page (or a set of pages), but not the whole wiki, which I was assuming is what you wanted. – svick Aug 2 '12 at 19:48
Yes, I wanted to search the entire wiki. Are there any tools on the toolserver for this? – Anderson Green Aug 2 '12 at 19:50

1 Answer

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It is possible to search Wikipedia (or any other site that a search engine can access) using simple regular expressions, as long as you rely on an search engine. The following Google search query searches Wikipedia for matches of the regular expression (Yahoo|Google|Microsoft):

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=site:en.wikipedia.org+(google+OR+yahoo+OR+microsoft)&oq=site:en.wikipedia.org+(google+OR+yahoo+OR+microsoft)&gs_l=hp.3...87411.96861.2.97076.26.24.2.0.0.0.79.1141.24.24.0...0.0...1c.1.7.psy-ab.s2oGD_2LKy4&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44158598,d.dmg&fp=dc8abc04c054405e&biw=1366&bih=639

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