Indexing search engine

[argumentum]

That search tool. I wanna search in AutoIt style. A func that will take the root path and the search string and return an array.
The closest that I read about is "MS indexing Search Engine ( from 2007 )" but it don't work in Win10.

Any clues are welcomed  

[TheDcoder]

Not sure why you want to use the search feature of explorer, does it work better now in Windows 10? It was always slow and usually not useful in Windows XP and 7.

If you want to take advantage of indexing, there is a software called Everything which indexes all files on a NTFS partition. Its search is crazy fast . I think it might even have a CLI, which you can use from AutoIt.

[argumentum]

I use everything for everything. ( https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/184771-voidtools-everything-file-search-engine-ipc/ )
But I've got ppl that use it to search for text from within the documents and other than making my own indexer ( with fts3 ), I rather use the one from the OS that already does that.
 

..and setting to "Index Properties and File Contents", it's just perfect.

Now, getting the data from

into an array takes a knowing I just don't have.

And don't mean read explorer.

46 minutes ago, argumentum said:

I wanna search in AutoIt style. A func that will take the root path and the search string and return an array.

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by argumentum

[RTFC]

Forget about MS search altogether; it's garbage and wholly unreliable. My go-to alternative: Agent Ransack allows save/load search criteria and exporting results to file. I've never looked back. Oh yeah, and it's free.

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by RTFC

[TheDcoder]

5 hours ago, argumentum said:

I use everything for everything. ( https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/184771-voidtools-everything-file-search-engine-ipc/ )

Ah, nice

5 hours ago, argumentum said:

But I've got ppl that use it to search for text from within the documents

I see, so you need to search the contents of the files themselves...

Aside from RTFC's recommendation. You may also want to look into the "silver searcher" (ag) which is an efficient searcher for text in files:

Quote

How is it so fast?

• Ag uses Pthreads to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and search files in parallel.
• Files are mmap()ed instead of read into a buffer.
• Literal string searching uses Boyer-Moore strstr.
• Regex searching uses PCRE's JIT compiler (if Ag is built with PCRE >=8.21).
• Ag calls pcre_study() before executing the same regex on every file.
• Instead of calling fnmatch() on every pattern in your ignore files, non-regex patterns are loaded into arrays and binary searched.

 

[Deye]

I'd say try creating it all using Power Shell that has a bundle of options for the search filters ..

Probably a gain of speed on windows than with other programs :

https://www.autoitscript.com/forum/topic/202387-wicked-thing-example/?tab=comments#comment-1452325 - (Not too clean of an example..)

windows Indexing:

https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Get-IndexedItem-PowerShell-5bca2dae

 

[KaFu]

SMF can search for text in files too (imho still quite fast), change "in" to "File Content" on the main search tab.

[argumentum]

15 hours ago, RTFC said:

Forget about MS search altogether; it's garbage and wholly unreliable.

Well, I never cared for it since it was not that great. Then again it was in the XP era. Now in times of Win10 and server 2019, it may actually deliver what was promised.
Now, if you can share current epoch info. that is still "garbage and wholly unreliable", then I'll look away and use a 3rd party or cook my own.

10 hours ago, Deye said:

I'd say try creating it all using Power Shell that has a bundle of options for the search filters

Thanks for the pointers. Tho, if there is powershell calling a DB, maybe there is a VBScript too.

I'll test in the next few days and see if I can get a VBScript so that I can go that way, else,
powershell, else,
3rd party, else,
my own ( and by may own, is getting most all the code from the forum😅), else,
.... forget about it ( in a New your accent type of forget about it ).

I have not made any promises to anyone about the functionality, so, no pressure other than my obsessive nature
but it sure is something I would like to have at hand ( without a command line utility ) ala UDF.