Windows 7 search - you gotta be kidding me
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I'm a dinosaur. I admit it. I have large green scales and sharp teeth perfect for gnawing on anything that looks tasty. All of which is to say that like many others here, my initial MS experiences were with DOS. And I'm strangely at peace with that. Since olden times, the DOS based search parameters have been honored. Whether I type in a search box from Explorer in Windows or from the command line prompt, * is the wildcard for everything, ? is the wildcard for one character. And thus, *.ascx* will give you *.ascx, *.ascx.cs, *.ascx.designer.cs since the last * means "and everything else after this." Imagine my surprise when I do that search in Windows 7 and it gives me simply *.ascx. If I search for *.ascx.*, I get *.ascx.cs and *.ascx.designer.cs, but no .ascx files since they don't have the . at the end. Exclaiming WTF with some enthusiasm, I went to a command prompt where, sure enough, *.ascx* works just like it always did. Clearly, there's a moron at work here. Either I'm simply too stupid to understand how to use Search in the Explorer, or some rocket scientist at MS thought it would be good to have pattern matching work differently in the GUI than it does on the command line (and all previous versions of Windows). And so, I put it to the masses here (washed and otherwise) who know well my knack for personal stupidity: am I simply not smart enough to properly use search, or is MS as brain dead as I'm thinking to break something so fundamental to an OS as the ability to search for files? After all, given how long it took to do file copies in Vista, it's not like this kind of thing is unprecedented. Grrr. That's it. I'm gonna go find a lesser mammal and gnaw on it...
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
It does, but you'd better prefix it with name:, otherwise it will also search content.
Sound advice for a happier search experience!
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try name:"*.ascx*"
No results at all with this approach, but thanks.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
I'm a dinosaur. I admit it. I have large green scales and sharp teeth perfect for gnawing on anything that looks tasty. All of which is to say that like many others here, my initial MS experiences were with DOS. And I'm strangely at peace with that. Since olden times, the DOS based search parameters have been honored. Whether I type in a search box from Explorer in Windows or from the command line prompt, * is the wildcard for everything, ? is the wildcard for one character. And thus, *.ascx* will give you *.ascx, *.ascx.cs, *.ascx.designer.cs since the last * means "and everything else after this." Imagine my surprise when I do that search in Windows 7 and it gives me simply *.ascx. If I search for *.ascx.*, I get *.ascx.cs and *.ascx.designer.cs, but no .ascx files since they don't have the . at the end. Exclaiming WTF with some enthusiasm, I went to a command prompt where, sure enough, *.ascx* works just like it always did. Clearly, there's a moron at work here. Either I'm simply too stupid to understand how to use Search in the Explorer, or some rocket scientist at MS thought it would be good to have pattern matching work differently in the GUI than it does on the command line (and all previous versions of Windows). And so, I put it to the masses here (washed and otherwise) who know well my knack for personal stupidity: am I simply not smart enough to properly use search, or is MS as brain dead as I'm thinking to break something so fundamental to an OS as the ability to search for files? After all, given how long it took to do file copies in Vista, it's not like this kind of thing is unprecedented. Grrr. That's it. I'm gonna go find a lesser mammal and gnaw on it...
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Does it work if you surround the search criteria in quotes:
"*.ascx*"?Nope. No results at all with the quotes.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Not to appear dense (though that may be unavoidable), but I'm not seeing a solution in the FM.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
No results at all with this approach, but thanks.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesIs your location indexed?
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That looks handy, though I'm philosophically opposed to installing a utility just so I can search the file system. I may get over that objection, but geez! And they wonder why everyone hated Vista, or anything that smelled like it!
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Nope. No results at all with the quotes.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesWeird. Worked for me. Actually, it doesn't bloody work for me at all. That's having interpreted what you wrote and what you actually meant, of course.
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Is your location indexed?
Nope. Haven't cared for the overhead of the indexers in the past so I tend to avoid them. Of course, there's always the old standby: cmd. :)
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Weird. Worked for me. Actually, it doesn't bloody work for me at all. That's having interpreted what you wrote and what you actually meant, of course.
Apparently it needs to be indexed. Leave it to MS to require jumping through a hoop that's been set on fire in order to do something as common as searching for files.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Search was fundamentally broken in Vista. I guess they are incrementally fixing it, if it at least does SOMETHING again. In XP, I had some desktop search thing install with instant update. It breaks search, I have to go past it to the old one to search my HDD.
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.
Morons. Must... resist... trip... to... Mac... store... :)
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
I'm a dinosaur. I admit it. I have large green scales and sharp teeth perfect for gnawing on anything that looks tasty. All of which is to say that like many others here, my initial MS experiences were with DOS. And I'm strangely at peace with that. Since olden times, the DOS based search parameters have been honored. Whether I type in a search box from Explorer in Windows or from the command line prompt, * is the wildcard for everything, ? is the wildcard for one character. And thus, *.ascx* will give you *.ascx, *.ascx.cs, *.ascx.designer.cs since the last * means "and everything else after this." Imagine my surprise when I do that search in Windows 7 and it gives me simply *.ascx. If I search for *.ascx.*, I get *.ascx.cs and *.ascx.designer.cs, but no .ascx files since they don't have the . at the end. Exclaiming WTF with some enthusiasm, I went to a command prompt where, sure enough, *.ascx* works just like it always did. Clearly, there's a moron at work here. Either I'm simply too stupid to understand how to use Search in the Explorer, or some rocket scientist at MS thought it would be good to have pattern matching work differently in the GUI than it does on the command line (and all previous versions of Windows). And so, I put it to the masses here (washed and otherwise) who know well my knack for personal stupidity: am I simply not smart enough to properly use search, or is MS as brain dead as I'm thinking to break something so fundamental to an OS as the ability to search for files? After all, given how long it took to do file copies in Vista, it's not like this kind of thing is unprecedented. Grrr. That's it. I'm gonna go find a lesser mammal and gnaw on it...
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Not to appear dense (though that may be unavoidable), but I'm not seeing a solution in the FM.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesMay I have misguided you a bit :-O (didn't read the FM myself). Syntax would be for example for finding all files with the (old dos syntax) *.bat* -> filename:*.bat* By the same token filename:???.bat will find all three-letter batch files. Quotes are not really needed, except when keywords would appear in the search string. I used to use name:, but filename: does not give me extraneous results. Works fine on my system!
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That looks handy, though I'm philosophically opposed to installing a utility just so I can search the file system. I may get over that objection, but geez! And they wonder why everyone hated Vista, or anything that smelled like it!
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
Not to appear dense (though that may be unavoidable), but I'm not seeing a solution in the FM.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesObviously, you failed to enter the query properly. You need to use the new Microsoft Search dialect, that has been greatly improved, with more features and power through its simplified search syntax. So all you had to type was ... Kind:Any Subject:Any Contains:Everything Author:Christopher Duncan || Lord Vader Date:> Today - Yesterday + Tomorrow * 356 - 12 + 1 Folders: All I mean really. Get with the program. ;P
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL -
Not to appear dense (though that may be unavoidable), but I'm not seeing a solution in the FM.
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Servicesdid you use appropriate technology to search the FM? e.g. did you index it? :)
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
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Obviously, you failed to enter the query properly. You need to use the new Microsoft Search dialect, that has been greatly improved, with more features and power through its simplified search syntax. So all you had to type was ... Kind:Any Subject:Any Contains:Everything Author:Christopher Duncan || Lord Vader Date:> Today - Yesterday + Tomorrow * 356 - 12 + 1 Folders: All I mean really. Get with the program. ;P
:..::. Douglas H. Troy ::..
Bad Astronomy |VCF|wxWidgets|WTL:laugh: I've got blisters on my fingers!
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting Services -
did you use appropriate technology to search the FM? e.g. did you index it? :)
Luc Pattyn [Forum Guidelines] [Why QA sucks] [My Articles]
I only read formatted code with indentation, so please use PRE tags for code snippets.
I'm not participating in frackin' Q&A, so if you want my opinion, ask away in a real forum (or on my profile page).
A whole effing sparse B-Tree ;P
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Morons. Must... resist... trip... to... Mac... store... :)
Christopher Duncan
www.PracticalUSA.com
Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes
Copywriting ServicesLoving my new iPad right now...
Christian Graus Driven to the arms of OSX by Vista. Read my blog to find out how I've worked around bugs in Microsoft tools and frameworks.