Desktop Search? Why So Terrible? Or Is It? What do you do?
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ALT+F7: it blocks your Commander until the search ends ALT+SHIFT+F7: search in a different, non-modal window. Useful, if you use the Allow only 1 copy of Total Commander at a time option. Only search in selected directories/files option is not available.
Yep, see my edited answer above. I've cursed many times at the fact that the search window blocked the main window... If only I had looked at the updates more closely :rolleyes: I have always wondered why windows would not natively go to a two-tree-visualization for its explorer. Once you have used one like Total commander, you cannot go back !
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus Entropy isn't what it used to.
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
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newton.saber wrote:
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech!
findstr does, though....
PooperPig - Coming Soon
findstr? Who knew? Thanks for the tip. Missed that addition to the commands. findstr is relatively new since it was only added in Win2K. :D
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
I use this little utility: http://www.indexyourfiles.com/ It's been around for years, it's fast and free.
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
Everything is good. http://www.voidtools.com/[^] Indexes the HDD very fast and finds dlls and other files that are usually hidden. It did stuff up on me once, but easily fixed, and it is easy to use and is as fast as. A windows application that makes you wonder why windows search is such a slug. The best bit is that it does find everything. I am pretty sure that I discovered Everything from the CP free tools page.
"Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." Frank Zappa 1980
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I keep the files on my own desktop organised in a way that makes sense to me, so if I need a file I generally have a pretty good idea where it is If I had to find something on somebody else's desktop however, I'd be screwed!
Windows started going downhill with Win95 when they replaced "File Manager" with "Windows Explorer". The user used to be in control, and managed their system. From that point, MS were in control, the user was in the dark, and had to "Explore" and hope they stumbled across something useful. 19 years and counting of trying to tame Windows... :-(
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
I use bash[^] as my daily driver shell on Windows (and on OS X when I'm using my own laptop), so I use
find[^] to look for specifically named files. I use ag[^] to search for text in files - it's VERY fast... And of course, on OS X, I have Spotlight[^], which works better than any indexing system I've used on Windows.Java, Basic, who cares - it's all a bunch of tree-hugging hippy cr*p CodeProject MVP for 2010 - who'd'a thunk it!
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
Used an old version of Copernic Desktop Search -- loved it. Paid for an upgrade (Ha, ha!) to 4.X CDS. Received "benefit" of it being an incredible resource (and disk hog), having my old search patterns unsupported (e.g., "dir_getFiles" is always parsed by CDS as "dir" AND "getFiles"), long lag time on opening the search window before I can enter parameters. The old CDS was a great way to find code snippets I vaguely remembered. The new CDS is marginally useful for that. UltraFileSearch (http://www.ultrafilesearch.com/) works great for me, as does Windows Grep (http://www.wingrep.com/). I will definitely try out Agent Ransack!
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
Use findstr /s /i ...
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
I just use Cygwin grep. It doesn't skip files like MS's search does, it works recursively, and it doesn't require that a massive database be kept up to date all the time. Trouble is, it can only find strings of text and doesn't understand the formatting of the content -- it completely misses words that have formatting inserted in the middle of them. That limitation hasn't yet been a problem for me.
We can program with only 1's, but if all you've got are zeros, you've got nothing.
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Thanks for the reply. I thought there was something like that. Interesting that google gave up on that and said that the built-in desktop searching was good enough. Sounds odd. I mean they're saying that the microsoft search is as good as the google devs can do? Really? I hate the built-in one. It almost sounds as if there was some kind of agreement between the two companies or something. Interesting.
Google's Desktop Search WAS good. I was really bummed when they discontinued it. I depended on it a lot.
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
Take a look at findstr. It's a far more powerful search engine for the Windows command line. Another free search engine I use is Notepad++, which has a find in files feature and puts the results into an editor window that allows you to click to open the files.
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
You want to try Voidtools Everything, free, portable and requires no indexing. People who say they remember where they put things instead of searching basically have not tried Everything yet. I am OCD about file organization and have no trouble recalling where I put things but if a simple and fast tool like Everything allows me to get to a file more quickly than endlessly clicking to the bottom of a deep directory structure, the search tool wins. In fact, Everything is not a file search tool at all, but rather a list of your files and folders which it then filters to display only matching files. It supports regex queries and it's great for performing batch operations e.g. delete all thumbs.db files on all drives in one go. PS Download latest beta, it's not been updated for moths but it's very stable.
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In the early 1980s I was working on an OS that provided separate directories for each user's files, but each user's file space was flat (like in CP/M or DOS 1.0). Then hierarchical directories where introduced, "Office style", with filing "Cabinets" with "Drawers" containing "Folders" of "Documents". But, as with every new and fancy mechanisms, many people were overusing it. The users simply were not trained to structure their information by location. Through the grapevine we heard that the local user group of one of our largest customers had been discussing the problem of documents getting lost in the wilderness. Then one of the users stood up and explained how she had solved the problem: She had created a single cabinet, named "Cabinet", with a single drawer, named "Drawer", and a single folder, named "Folder", where she placed all her documents. Everything was there, in Cabinet/Drawer/Folder/filename, nothing was ever lost! And the crowd rejoiced: Great idea! A couple weeks later everybody had merged all their cabinets into one cabinet, all their drawers into one drawer, and all their folders into a single folder...
Wonderful! After 8 years of trying to work out the best way to manage documents in Windows, this year I finally arrived at the conclusion that everything should be in a single folder. Hierarchical folder structures are the devil! Of course, having a single folder means that the names and metadata for files become more important - but that is A Good Thing, because: good names and metadata = more searchable.
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
For discs or groups of directories where I have to search for stuff often, I use a "media cataloging tool" called Cathy (from here[^]), which I particularly like because (apart from its giving instant results) you can add multiple discs/dirs to its "catalog", and it searches all their content in one operation.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I started using computers professionally around 1992 so I'm very familiar with the command line. Anyway, I still find the command-line to be the best bet to 1. find a file :
dir /s finkle*.*
2. or search for text within multiple files:
find /I "finkle" *.*
However, cmd-line find doesn't all you to search subdirs. blech! The built-in windows (and yes this post is about windows-- maybe Linux is better? -- chime in) search is really quite terrible and there are times when it will ignore files and terribly ugly details I remember from XP, etc. Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition? Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something? Just curious if you've found this to be true too.
Personally, I’ve found the best tool for desktop search is Everything by David Carpenter. You can find it on the voidtools website. http://www.voidtools.com[^] It’s excellent, has shortcuts for various types of searches, supports regex and is super fast, and extremely small and doesn’t try to sell you advertising. Regards Greg
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newton.saber wrote:
Why is the state of searching your own computer in such a terrible condition?
It was no concern of the OS in 1992.
newton.saber wrote:
Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something?
For DOS? ..an indexing-system that parses various file-formats "in the background"? Ehr, no, not in DOS.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
newton.saber wrote:
Wasn't there a google project for desktop search or something?
For DOS?
No, for Windows. OP stated that he uses the command line for search even in modern Windows environments. And yes, Google Desktop was a sadly shortlived piece of software that added a search field to the Windows taskbar and allowed users to search their files. It had its shortcomings (the indexer was pathetically slow, the index files were huge, and it was running off HDDs and so didn't have the in-memory speed advantages that Google gains on their servers), but as an alternative to the (then-current) Windows XP search tool, it was a major advancement. Then Microsoft went and made a halfway decent desktop search field in Vista, improved on it in 7, and again sped it up in 8. And OP probably hasn't given it a fair shot, because on a daily basis (using Windows 7) I experience none of the problems OP complained about.