-- example usage: select all idle air units, excluding transports and bombers

-- smartSelect("AIR MOBILE +idle -TRANSPORTATION -BOMBER")

-- to bind this as a hotkey in your game.prefs make an action like this:

-- UI_Lua import("/lua/keymap/smartSelection.lua").smartSelect("AIR MOBILE +idle -TRANSPORTATION -BOMBER")

local utils = import('/lua/system/utils.lua')

-- sets selection as per string expression

function smartSelect(strExpression)

-- some of these calls crash game if bad category name, so wrap in pcall

local success, value = pcall(function()

local expression = compile(strExpression)

--LOG(repr(expression))

setSelection(expression)

return expression

end)

if success == false then

LOG("smartSelect failed: " .. strExpression)

end

end

-- sets selection as per compiled expression

function setSelection(expression)

local others = utils.StringJoin(expression.others, " ")

ConExecute("Ui_SelectByCategory " .. others)

local units = GetSelectedUnits()

for k,v in expression.negatives do

if units ~= nil then

units = EntityCategoryFilterOut(categories[v], units)

end

end

SelectUnits(units)

end

-- convert a string expression into tokens

function compile(strExpression)

local result = {}

result.others = {}

result.negatives = {}

local tokens = utils.StringSplit(strExpression, " ") -- split by space

for k,v in tokens do

if utils.StringStartsWith(v, "-") then

-- tokens with minus symbol are "negative"

local withoutSymbol = string.sub(v,2)

table.insert(result.negatives, withoutSymbol)

else

-- everything else is an "other". This includes categories (eg: AIR) and modifiers (eg: +idle)

table.insert(result.others, v)

end

end

return result

end