Combining or Modifying Conditions

In this section, we will explore how to combine multiple conditions into longer statements and how to apply a negative match to conditions. With just a basic understanding of how conditions can be combined or modified, you will quickly learn how to craft complex ones that target exactly the data you need.

Marking a Condition as a Negative

By using a !, you can apply a negative to many conditions. This is useful when you want to use a condition to exclude files, rather than target them.

Here are some examples of negative matches that will exclude files.

Match files that do NOT have the Space Launch tag:

# Match files that do NOT have the tag "Space Launch" (case sensitive)
!HAS_TAG("Space Launch")

Match files that do not start with mars (lowercase):

# Match files that do NOT have the name "mars*.*" (case sensitive)
!FNMATCH("mars*.*",NAME)

Match files that do not have the Project Apollo label:

# Match files that do NOT have the label "Project Apollo"
!HAS_LABEL(LABEL('Project Apollo'))

Build a Conditional Statement Using Conditions

Objective conditions do not need to be singular. You can combine them with if or or statements and even ( ). In this section, we will review three different conditions that also leverage conditional statements.

Each of the examples uses ⇐ or >= conditionals for date statements, meaning that the times referenced will also match the condition. Remove the = if you don’t want to match the referenced time, and match only the value that precedes or follows it.

Example 1

Desired match: Live files only (no snapshot data), used within the last 6 months with the "Space Launch" tag OR contained within the jupiter folder and used within the last 30 days.

Equivalent condition written in Hammerscript:

IS_LIVE AND ((LAST_USE_AGE<=6*MONTHS AND HAS_TAG("Space Launch")) OR (FNMATCH("*/jupiter/*",PATH) AND LAST_USE_AGE<=30*DAYS))

Example 2

Desired match: All files that start with mars (all lowercase) OR files with the orbit extension that were created less than 60 days ago.

Equivalent condition written in Hammerscript:

FNMATCH("mars*.*",NAME) OR (CREATE_AGE <= 60*DAYS AND FNMATCH("*.orbit",NAME))

Example 3

Desired match: Live files last used between 6 months and 1 year ago.

Equivalent condition written in Hammerscript:

IS_LIVE AND (LAST_USE_AGE>=6*MONTHS AND LAST_USE_AGE<=1*YEARS)