I’m trying to find a file based on pattern matching on the file name only, but the results I see are nonsensical. I’d expect a search on “8678” to only return files with a name tht contains the literal string “8678". but it returns much more. I don’t even have “File contents” selected in the search options. Using "*8678.*” in the search field doesn’t help. So, WTH is going on?
I tried this on my computer and got similar results. The dropdown menu “File Contents” does not work. Google search said: “To force Windows Search to look only at file names and ignore the text inside them, use the built-in search operator filename: or change your global index settings to properties-only.” Using filename: worked for me.
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Thanks! Worked for me as well. And it was easy to boot. Although it’s still laughable that it functions so opaquely by default, with not even a way to make it work via the pickable search options.
I might think twice about using that phrase on this board. 
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Why? I thought twice about using “WTH” earlier, thinking it might be blocked.
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Hi @g0177325,
My computer runs Linux.
While I could use the ‘find’ utility or the search features of thunar, I often need the output to use for something so I wrote a simple utility in perl, ff, to find filenames that contain a specific pattern. I can use the output as is or redirect it to a file for later use.
For finding files based on contents, I wrote a different utility, gf, to search file contents using an exact match string or a regular expression to find a variety of lines that ‘kind of match.’ It can be used case sensitive or insensitive.
The use of regular expressions makes it extremely powerful when I have an idea of what I am looking for but do not know the exact wording or spelling.
It highlights the match on each line. It also has an option for me to edit each found file.
Both start searching the current directory and descend through all subdirectories of it. That allows me to limit searches.
Does that help you?
Gene
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Thanks. I’m well versed in perl and regular expressions, having used them daily in my job as a software engineer working in both Windows and AIX, and I use Strawberry Perl on occasion still, to do interesting stuff in Windows. But at this point, I’d rather just install a better file manager/searcher application on Windows than bother rolling my own. Life is too short for this retired IT developer.
It’s just quite annoying that Windows is so broken in this area.
There is a very good program that gets is data from the Find function of MacOS. It is named Alfred - from England. If you can use that, you might be pleased with it.
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I was joking, but…
Boot has a very specific meaning when applied to a computer.