window_role criteria variable.

[haddadnidal]

Hi, i have i3 installed and i am using Evolution as my email client. i wanted to know if the variable inside [window_role="$variable"] can take just the beginning of the wm_window_role from the window itself and change it's behavior as i want.
Example : My main window role is EShellWindow-94918293030608 and the Send Email window role is EMsgComposer-94918322275296 i want i3 to assign the Eshell part to Tiling and the EMsg window to floating.
the numbers are randomly generated by the evolution app.

Thank you.

Debian 11
i3 version 4.19.1-non-git

[Airblader]

Most match criteria, including window_role, are regular expressions, so you can do prefix / suffix matches using that. I'm not sure I really understood the question, but it seems like this might be the answer.

[Airblader]

Glad it worked out. You should combine these into a single match of chained commands:

for_Window [class="Evolution" window_role="EMsgComposer"] floating enable, move absolute position center

[haddadnidal]

Thanks.

[haddadnidal]

Just to understand more the concept. the regex search if i may say so is applied on the variable in window_role or i can perform a regex conditions inside of the variable ? thanks for taking your time to explain.

[Airblader]

Before i3 actually parses the configuration, it does an extra pass in which it simply substitutes the variables. The resulting config is then parsed, so in terms of behavior, just imagine your variable being drop-in replaced with its value.

Meaning: your variable can contain the regular expression syntax. In fact, even something like this is allowed:

-- Assuming these variables:
-- $forw = for_window
-- $float = floating enable

$forw [class="…"] $float

because by the time we parse the config, all variables are already substituted.

[haddadnidal]

oh ok thank you very much.