So I just posted this question on reddit:
Say I’m at a conference. People are tweeting using the #conf20XX hashtag.
I’m also a climber – and it would be nice to find someone to go climbing with while I’m here. So what I want to do is find all of the people who have used the #conf20XX hashtag who have also separately used the word ‘climbing’ in a different tweet – is this a possible thing?
and a redditor replied with this:
Difficult to do. I would try the following.
Search conference hashtag. Find 5 or 6 interesting and engaged looking tweeters
Search – climbing (from:@handle1 OR from:@handle2 OR …)It would be pretty tedious, but you’d find a few people after a while.
Which I think I can do with code… Let’s find out.
This is a live notes post. It is of very low interest to almost all readers, but I do believe that the more open my work is, the better that work goes. These are posts mostly written for me, but if you arrived here from a search engine and it looks like I once had a problem that you have now then feel free to drop me a line and I’ll put things into order a little bit.
#29/4/16-19:03:21 GMT+1:
First thing I want to know is: does the OR…OR…OR thing work for a large number of users… I’m going to use a handy dataset I happen to have: UK members of Parliament!
#29/4/16-19:05:15 GMT+1:
So this is my list: mps
I’m going to see if I can produce the very long search string in VIM.
It’s formatted like this:
Jo Cox MP @Jo_Cox1
Jamie Reed @jreedmp
Guto Bebb @GutoBebb
Ed Vaizey @edvaizey
Danny Kinahan @DdeBK
Ann Clwyd @AnnClwyd
Alan Mak @AlanMakMP
and I just want to… wait… I have another file.
#29/4/16-19:07:20 GMT+1:
Yes. screenamesOnly Let’s use that one.
#29/4/16-19:08:51 GMT+1:
Okay
:%s/^/OR from:
got me most of the way…. and I have this: searchTwitter
Let’s give it a go. I’m going to search for any time an MP has mentioned “disability”
#29/4/16-19:11:48 GMT+1:
Well that was fun… Maybe 450 account was a little strong… Let’s start smaller
#29/4/16-19:13:34 GMT+1:
Technically an improvement…
#29/4/16-19:15:59 GMT+1:
Just tried on a tiny example (two MPs) and it works… I wonder what the upper limit is…
#29/4/16-19:19:33 GMT+1:
Okay, the longest version I can find is (linked to results):
which is a few (21) but only a few. But the usecase is relatively small – the initial set is likely to be less than 60 and that will just mean I split into two options. I think we have a winner.