In addition to regular web addresses, SiteCrawler can use address patterns as starting points. Address patterns look like regular web addresses, but contain one or more special items. These items are expanded to generate multiple addresses to start from.
There are two kinds of special items. The first kind is called range specifier. It lets you produce a number of resulting addresses between (and including) two numbers. Put two numbers between a pair of square brackets, separated by a dash.
For example, [3-10] would generate addresses with numbers 3 to 10. The length of the starting number is used as the minimum length of the generated numbers. This means that you can prepend zeros to the starting number to make the generated numbers get a minimum length.
The other kind is called item specifier. It works similarly, but instead of using a range, it lets you specify all the replacements yourself, and these replacements don't have to be numbers. Put the items within a pair of curly brackets, separated by commas. Example: {foo,bar,baz}
You can combine these two types of specifiers any number of times you want in the same pattern. But do keep in mind that it's easy to generate a huge number of resulting addresses by using multiple items.
It's also possible to put range specifiers inside item specifiers, such as {[1-4],[6-10]}. This would generate the numbers 1-10, except 5.
http://www.example.com/gallery[1-4].html
produces:
http://www.example.com/gallery1.html
http://www.example.com/gallery2.html
http://www.example.com/gallery3.html
http://www.example.com/gallery4.html
http://www.example.com/{about,info,contact}.html
produces:
http://www.example.com/about.html
http://www.example.com/info.html
http://www.example.com/contact.html
http://www.example.com/images/{photos,animations}/[09-11].gif
produces:
http://www.example.com/images/photos/09.gif
http://www.example.com/images/photos/10.gif
http://www.example.com/images/photos/11.gif
http://www.example.com/images/animations/09.gif
http://www.example.com/images/animations/10.gif
http://www.example.com/images/animations/11.gif