Solve : Better File Search Utility?

1.	Solve : Better File Search Utility?
Answer» Quote from: Deuxdad on November 22, 2013, 10:56:46 PM "SearchMyFiles" by Nirsoft (nirsoft.net). SearchMyFiles will search WITHIN files for whatever string you type in. Agent Ransack will do that. (Nirsoft have released some very good software. I find a lot of uses for their Nircmd utility.) Agent Ransack works perfect. Also good to know that it has advanced capabilities to search for a string within files of forgotten file name.Agent Ransack has a lot of features... set up & save complex searches, export search results to a csv file, command line programmable search with no window, etc, the search result list is right clickable like Windows Explorer. I often use it as a Explorer substitute - handy to show all files in a tree (with * as the search term and "search SUBFOLDERS" selected) Agent Ransack has been around a while and is a solid utility. My only complaint about it is that it doesn't index files and thus the searches are not "instantaneous".Quote from: Allan on November 24, 2013, 06:46:15 AM Agent Ransack has been around a while and is a solid utility. My only complaint about it is that it doesn't index files and thus the searches are not "instantaneous". Yes, I suppose it's a trade-off between devoting system resources to the indexing task and speed of search. Agent Ransack's publisher, Mythicsoft say "While indexing can certainly improve the speed of searches in certain circumstances there are many drawbacks. These drawbacks include: - Indexing requires significant processor and disk resources simply to build and maintain the index - INDEXES can become corrupt or out of sync with the actual files - There are security implications with important data copied to a location not under user control - It is not feasible to index EVERY file type, especially binary files - It is not possible to use regular expressions on indexed data". I don't disagree with any of that ST, I simply prefer Everything for my needs (and the overhead really isn't that bad - at least not on today's systems). Having said that, I do have Agent Ransack installed though I rarely use it.Quote from: Allan on November 24, 2013, 07:47:51 AM I do have Agent Ransack installed though I rarely use it. I don't use file search utilities all that much really; I generally know where my files are, or at least which drive and folder they are likely to be in. By the time I have started a search I am quite likely to have found the ones I am interested in. I tend to rely quite a lot on the "Recent files" lists in many applications' file menus. Quote Agent Ransack has been around a while and is a solid utility. My only complaint about it is that it doesn't index files and thus the searches are not "instantaneous". Yah I noticed that, but I am OK with it. I don't mind telling it to find something and walking away for a minute to get a bottle of water and then come back and its there. I am so use to doing this with scripts that process data anyways that its nothing new to start something and walk away and come back to the end result/solution and hopefully not an error message..LOL Searching just now for .pl* Search Statistics Found: 1,549 items (8.29 MB) Checked: 932,069 items (434.25 GB) Duration: 5:57 secs Status: Completed *If i didnt have a copy of my external HDD copied to my local C: drive then it would have been done much sooner, but my perl script was in the copy of the external so it had to run there anyways to find it. It had to search through a massive amount of data. I was playing with AR the other day and was thinking that one way the makers could speed it up maybe is if they added a feature to discover all files, and then create directory tree checksums and so very quickly it may be able to know that nothing has changed for an entire directory tree and to skip over rediscovery of files and folders etc. However i also thought that sometimes features like this to make it smarter without tapping into an indexing service that eats up resources can actually slow the program down to where maybe it is actually faster at discovering each and every file in every branch of the directory tree than it is to perform a checksum comparison of the whole since it will have to read in the whole anyways to come up with a match or mismatched checksum result to that of the last time it went out on its discovery routine. As I have found with writing other programs, sometimes what you think is better and faster is actually smarter code but slower to achieve your goal compared to the original less complex code that processes faster even though seems less efficient in design. = One reason why sometimes when I get a program coded up and it works I learned to not bother wasting time attempting to making it better in how it achieves the intended goal, and try not to get SUCKED into the time waste of restructuring to make it smarter and faster. However when the first program written is lacking in a necessary feature, it has to be added in the next rev of it if it is a must have feature that the original code does not possess.

Answer»

Quote from: Deuxdad on November 22, 2013, 10:56:46 PM

"SearchMyFiles" by Nirsoft (nirsoft.net). SearchMyFiles will search WITHIN files for whatever string you type in.

Agent Ransack will do that. (Nirsoft have released some very good software. I find a lot of uses for their Nircmd utility.)

Agent Ransack works perfect. Also good to know that it has advanced capabilities to search for a string within files of forgotten file name.Agent Ransack has a lot of features... set up & save complex searches, export search results to a csv file, command line programmable search with no window, etc, the search result list is right clickable like Windows Explorer. I often use it as a Explorer substitute - handy to show all files in a tree (with * as the search term and "search SUBFOLDERS" selected)

Agent Ransack has been around a while and is a solid utility. My only complaint about it is that it doesn't index files and thus the searches are not "instantaneous".Quote from: Allan on November 24, 2013, 06:46:15 AM

Agent Ransack has been around a while and is a solid utility. My only complaint about it is that it doesn't index files and thus the searches are not "instantaneous".

Yes, I suppose it's a trade-off between devoting system resources to the indexing task and speed of search. Agent Ransack's publisher, Mythicsoft say

"While indexing can certainly improve the speed of searches in certain circumstances there are many drawbacks.

These drawbacks include:

- Indexing requires significant processor and disk resources simply to build and maintain the index

- INDEXES can become corrupt or out of sync with the actual files

- There are security implications with important data copied to a location not under user control

- It is not feasible to index EVERY file type, especially binary files

- It is not possible to use regular expressions on indexed data".

I don't disagree with any of that ST, I simply prefer Everything for my needs (and the overhead really isn't that bad - at least not on today's systems). Having said that, I do have Agent Ransack installed though I rarely use it.Quote from: Allan on November 24, 2013, 07:47:51 AM

I do have Agent Ransack installed though I rarely use it.

I don't use file search utilities all that much really; I generally know where my files are, or at least which drive and folder they are likely to be in. By the time I have started a search I am quite likely to have found the ones I am interested in. I tend to rely quite a lot on the "Recent files" lists in many applications' file menus.
Quote

Agent Ransack has been around a while and is a solid utility. My only complaint about it is that it doesn't index files and thus the searches are not "instantaneous".

Yah I noticed that, but I am OK with it. I don't mind telling it to find something and walking away for a minute to get a bottle of water and then come back and its there. I am so use to doing this with scripts that process data anyways that its nothing new to start something and walk away and come back to the end result/solution and hopefully not an error message..LOL

Searching just now for *.pl

Search Statistics

Found: 1,549 items (8.29 MB)
Checked: 932,069 items (434.25 GB)
Duration: 5:57 secs
Status: Completed

*If i didnt have a copy of my external HDD copied to my local C: drive then it would have been done much sooner, but my perl script was in the copy of the external so it had to run there anyways to find it. It had to search through a massive amount of data.

I was playing with AR the other day and was thinking that one way the makers could speed it up maybe is if they added a feature to discover all files, and then create directory tree checksums and so very quickly it may be able to know that nothing has changed for an entire directory tree and to skip over rediscovery of files and folders etc. However i also thought that sometimes features like this to make it smarter without tapping into an indexing service that eats up resources can actually slow the program down to where maybe it is actually faster at discovering each and every file in every branch of the directory tree than it is to perform a checksum comparison of the whole since it will have to read in the whole anyways to come up with a match or mismatched checksum result to that of the last time it went out on its discovery routine.

As I have found with writing other programs, sometimes what you think is better and faster is actually smarter code but slower to achieve your goal compared to the original less complex code that processes faster even though seems less efficient in design. = One reason why sometimes when I get a program coded up and it works I learned to not bother wasting time attempting to making it better in how it achieves the intended goal, and try not to get SUCKED into the time waste of restructuring to make it smarter and faster. However when the first program written is lacking in a necessary feature, it has to be added in the next rev of it if it is a must have feature that the original code does not possess.

Solve : Better File Search Utility?

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