Search feature in Windows 7 = No Search!

demango said:

CyberZeus said:

Star means "any character".

Technically, "?" means any character. "*" means any number of characters. If you typed something like "?.*" in the box, you would get an assortment of files with names like a.out(Lol, UNIX reference) and z.image. Though why you would make files with one letter in the label is beyond me.

Because it can be used to replace ANY character ANYWHERE in a search string, and as opposite to "*" which as you said replaces any number of characters, with "?" you can narrow search to include only strings with certain length.

Examples:

• Search filename:?ally.* > finds files with a 5 character long name characters 2 to 5 being ally, followed by a period and any number of characters
  
  • Finds Wally.doc, Sally.jpg but not Totally_awesome_video.avi or Rally_Monte_Carlo.pdf
• Search filename:Image_?0.* > finds files with an 8 character long name characters 1 to 6 being Image_, followed by one character, 0 and any extension
  
  • Finds Image_10.png, Image_60.jpg but not Image_13.gif or Image_67.jpg
• Search filename:*.??? > finds any file with a three character extension
  
  • Finds Pic.jpg or This_Pic_Is_from_Our_Holiday.bmp, but not Video.mpg4, Image.jpeg or Stupid_Filename.zz
• Search filename:Memo_???_John.doc > finds any file with a 13 character long name characters 1 to 5 being Memo_ and characters 9 to 13 _John, with extension doc
  
  • Finds Memo_JAN_John.doc, Memo_123_John. doc, but not Memo_to_John.doc, Memo_from_John.doc or Memo_1234_John.doc

Kari

Nice. It seems that I can find files with several different words in their names. Say UI*Bar*Translucent

Ok. So how about indexing brand spanking new files? I found a random text file on one of my drives, edited it and added "password" so I can presumably find it later ;]. Last attempt took over 45 minutes and consumed a lot of electricity :P due to heavy CPU load.

Let's see how long will this take this time.

Thanks for your tips :)

demango said:

CyberZeus said:

Star means "any character".

Technically, "?" means any character. "*" means any number of characters. If you typed something like "?.*" in the box, you would get an assortment of files with names like a.out(Lol, UNIX reference) and z.image. Though why you would make files with one letter in the label is beyond me.

Please don't be fussy. I tried to give very very simple explanation...

Jutta said:

Hi,
have you tried pressing the Start Windows Key + F, it is a much better Search Function!

Much better than what exactly?

zYx said:

Jutta said:

Hi,
have you tried pressing the Start Windows Key + F, it is a much better Search Function!

Much better than what exactly?

Jutta said:

Then the Search Option in Start Option

The difference is that searching form Start menu > Search only searches indexed locations, whereas searching from any Explorer window's search field (inclusive Win + F window) also searches non-indexed locations.

Kari