Tested locally, it works as expected.

However, I wonder if this could be implemented more efficiently with #78310 strip_bbcode() method. However, the downside is that you wouldn't be able to search something with its tags anymore, but I wonder how common of a use case this is to warrant the performance cost.

func _ready() -> void:
	for i in ["red", "green", "cyan", "magenta", "yellow", "white"]:
		print_rich("G[b][i][shake][color=%s]owo[/color][/shake][/i][/b]dot" % i)

I thought of this as well however I did not want to assume that, those who would print with color do not want to use that as a searchable identifier. While my implementation is a little hacky, it should only use one instance of the rich text label and, it should only try to search if it can not find a match otherwise.

I also thought about removing the

p_message.text.find_char('[') != -1

as it hurts to look at.

Do you see any significant down side in just attempting to parse all of the strings that do not match immediately for bbcode?

like so:

	// If not found, also check the BBCode-parsed text
	if (!search_match) {
		// Lazy initialize the BBCode parser
		if (!bbcode_parser) {
			bbcode_parser = memnew(RichTextLabel);
			bbcode_parser->set_use_bbcode(true);
		}

		// Ensure clean state for each message
		bbcode_parser->clear();
		bbcode_parser->parse_bbcode(p_message.text);
		String parsed_text = bbcode_parser->get_parsed_text();
		search_match = parsed_text.containsn(search_text);
	}  
This would essentially search everything twice... 
	

I think the current implementation is fine. Checking for [ ensures that expensive BBCode parsing is done only if there can be BBCode. Most messages won't be affected and checking for a single char is cheap compared to searching for match.

Could you squash your commits? See our pull request guidelines for more information

Thanks! Congratulations on your first merged contribution! 🎉

Cherry-picked for 4.5.2.