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FileLocator is missing a very important feature
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Posted by 22111
Oct 24, 2013 at 05:43 PM
On this page
http://www.mythicsoft.com/filelocatorpro
you will find a lot of fine very features of FL Pro; it’s MUCH better than their light version, FL Light (also called “Agent Ransack”).
But one feature, of which the coding would have been SO EASY, is missing: “Search (again) within the search results”.
It has got regex, it has got Boolean, it’s really a very good thing. But since it doesn’t build up any index but “searches from start”, for every search command, it would be so extremely helpful for FL to be able to restrain the search for an additional search to those files it already listed for the previous search: If your first search brought you 40 or 60 files, very often you’ll be able to restrain your search by adding an additional search term, and then, FL Pro will start a whole new search again over all the files you will have included into your very first search, meaning this additional search will again take several minutes - instead of just seaching within the results your “first” search brought to you.
As said, the coding of this would be VERY easy, and it goes without saying that I brouht this to the attention of the developer, so we might expect this feature rather soon, and under this condition, I very much recommend buying FL Pro.
Posted by Cassius
Oct 24, 2013 at 08:59 PM
If you are just searching for a file or folder, I highly recommend the FREE “MasterSeeker.” The first time you use it, it creates a cache. If you put it in startup (and a shortcut in, say, the System Tray), then it “remembers” the cache and you only have to refresh it if you add or delete files or folders or change their names or locations. Once the cache is set, searches are instantaneous!
Posted by 22111
Oct 24, 2013 at 09:58 PM
Thank you, Cassius! Re Listary, I ended up disabling it since even when I tried to just have it active for some file managers, not others, it went into my way everywhere… but it includes the free “Everywhere”, lately, so installing just “Everywhere” should perhaps be a good idea… or then, MasterSeeker (master-seeker.com ) I hadn’t been aware of before!
But I mentioned FileLocator since it’s the “thing in the middle”, between index-based desktop search engines (of which the very best is without any doubt dtSearch, costs a fortune but really is brilliant, does so much more than any other! (just trialled it, but one day, I’ll buy it!)), and those very specific “search files by parts of their names” tools.
It doesn’t build up an index, so a search, on my system, is about 2 or 3 minutes for about 3 giga of data (I just run it in specific folders/subfolders), but then displays a list, similar to outliners, not in tree form, but left pane = file with the “find”, and right pane = all the lines in which the found term then is listed, for the respective, selected file in the left pane.
I like this VERY much, and many people rave about this program, and I was tempted to finally buy it, but then, I discovered it cannot search, again, within those files only it has already found within your previous search, and this means, if you must have it search within 3 giga or 10 giga of files, it will start all over again, when in fact, by coding time of perhaps 4 or 5 hours incl. debugging, it should be able to confine this second search, upon request, on just those files already listed within the left pane (and this would mean it must perhaps search again 300 or 500 MB, not 3 or 10 giga of data).
And since coding of this additional feature would be so easy, so quickly done, I hope to create some “publicity”, also some light “pressure”, on the developer to do this - and in fact I’d be very happy to buy then, since I often use the “light”, free version.
It goes without saying that for an index-driven desktop search engine, this “search in previouus results” feature is less important, since results would appear almost instantly in both cases - but FL is the search tool which, by its conception, would immensely profit from this “search in search” functionality… or its user, to be precise.
(This functionality is needed whenever you don’t have just 12 files listed in the left pane, but 60 or 80 - then it’s time to refine your search. Of course, whenever you see the left pane is filled up too quickly, you can abort the running search and refine the next one immediately… but this implies your checking the tool visually while it’s running. I sometimes wondered if I better bought an index-based search tool… and here, the better solution would indeed be to enhance FL.)
Posted by xtabber
Oct 25, 2013 at 02:46 AM
Version 7 of FileLocator Pro, which was released less than a month ago, introduces Mythicsoft calls Document Caching:
While FileLocator Pro’s multi-thread searching algorithms are lightning
fast they can still be slowed by the need to convert large documents
into text every time they’re searched. Version 7 introduces a new
Document Caching functionality that allows FileLocator Pro to store
converted text in a caching database for use in subsequent searches.
This worked so well for one our beta testers, where search times over
26,000 PDFs went from over 5 minutes down to just 10 seconds, that they
were able to use cached searches instead of going with an indexed search
solution (avoiding with all the headaches associated with indexing).
Posted by Cassius
Oct 25, 2013 at 04:48 AM
Thanks xtabber!
I once used File Locator Pro…in fact, I probably was among the first users. I stopped using it when many PIMs started compressing their files and/or had file formats that made it difficult/impossible for FLP to show the results in a recognizable form. I’ll have to try v. 7.