Desired feature- Show captured text in Search - A rip-off from Internet search engines!

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2002 Jul 04, 13:44

It would be much more efficient if the following features are added to the search:

1. Ability to do boolean search, with multiple words; both in-
* name-based search
* text-based search

2. When searching for a file/folder, the 2xExplorer returns just the names. If the 2xExplorer shows the text around the search string also in the search result (a la Google), then finding the right file out of multiple results will be really easy!

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Jul 04, 16:36

boolean and regular expression searches are in my plans -- as long as i find the code for these difficult programming issues

the google-like result presentation is a nice idea but i can't think of a way to do it within a list view control used by 2x

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2002 Jul 05, 07:48

Wow! That was fast, Nikos!

With so many (fast) responses, just when do you find the time to code?

Only yesterday I have found a beautiful implementation of all the three concepts in a free utility called "agentransack"

, which has the following features:

* Boolean search-name
* Boolean search- contents
* Listing of captured text containing keywords

Like the 2xExplorer, this utility also enjoys the top rating of "6" at www.nonags.com.

I thought you might like to see it.

The link for this utility is here:
http://www.nonags.com/files....tp

Also, can you accomodate this feature in xplorer2, if not in 2xExplorer?

By the way, the label "alpha" given to xplorer2 and the warning to use it cautiously scares me; but I am sure many of the members would very much like to have a peek at the screenshots and feature-list from a safe distance!

So, can you put these on your website, please?

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Jul 05, 10:36

x2 snapshots are only for those brave enough to try the alpha version :D

dude! it's ok!
x2 is alpha but it is quite stable. Thousands of people have tried it and didn't report any major catastrophies (except for that guy whose hard disk got accidentally formatted ;) )

I have to call it alpha so as to cover my backside, just in case. Still if you run it for 5 minutes checking its features I'm sure that nothing bad will come upon you. What wouldn't make sense would be using it for your day-to-day file management though!

BTW, agent ransack is nice, if only i could get my hands on his regular expression matching code...

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2002 Jul 08, 06:55

I wasn't thinking of regular expressions really: for non-programmer users, just a google-like simple boolean search would be more appropriate.

Also, Agent Ransack displays raw text, including all control characters displayed as special characters. In MS Office Word/Excel/PowerPoint, the proportion of control characters is too high; and therefore the captured text contains too many junk characters. An improvement I can think over AgenRansack is to retain only text, and replace the entire string of junk characters with a single symbol ">>", to make it more readable; just as Google does.

(BUT- Is that implementable?? :sly: )

Post by **nikos** » 2002 Jul 08, 12:23

boolean search algorithms are every bit as complicated as regular expression matching (especially the NEAR keyword). I could write my own code for that but I bet it's going to be really slow. There are some "tricks" that I wouldn't know to improve search efficiency

that's why i need to find ready-made code for it. I'm sure there is something out there but right now i've got other things on my mind

WRT showing the text located, wouldn't you be better off dropping this onto agent ransack's mailbag?

narayan · Post by **narayan** » 2002 Jul 09, 05:52

Well, what did you think? I had already dropped the idea in AgentRansack's mailbag

I was just making sure that 2xExplorer stays one step ahead of even the best!