[RFC]: add support for filtering the side menu by REPL alias

[kgryte]

Description

This RFC proposes adding support for filtering the side menu according to a package's REPL alias.

Currently, a user can filter according to the nested package tree in the main project. However, it would be nice if a user could also filter according to REPL alias.

For example, the query

base.sin

would resolve the package

@stdlib/math/base/special/sin

in the side menu.

Similarly, the query

base.(sin|cos)

would resolve the packages

@stdlib/math/base/special/cos
@stdlib/math/base/special/sin

in the side menu.

Related Issues

No.

Questions

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Other

No.

Checklist

• [X] I have read and understood the Code of Conduct.
• [X] Searched for existing issues and pull requests.
• [X] The issue name begins with RFC:.

[kgryte]

This is a little tricky to do because the side menu filter currently supports regular expression filters which may include the use of a . to indicate any character, not a literal period.

Hence, could be hard to disambiguate whether a user wants to search based on a REPL alias or a regular expression using the special . character.

[kgryte]

Limiting filtering by REPL alias to only when the REPL API docs mode is active does not fully address the ambiguity. While it would provide a strong indication that a user wants to filter by alias, we would not be able to readily distinguish between

base.si

and

base..in

where, in the former, we want to use the . as a delimiter and, in the latter, to represent any character.