Looking for best Text Indexing/Search Program

[Artful999]

I have a sizeable personal archive of text documents, and I am looking
for the best program to search those files for combinations of words and
phrases. (If this question would be better suited to another group,
please kindly direct me.)

The program should be able to:
- Perform searches using up to at least 10 words, in any order
- Use wildcards for letters and/or whole words
- Use regular expressions and boolean operators (and, or, near, not)
- Search across linefeeds and page breaks
- Search for derivatives (plurals, possessives; tenses would be a bonus)
- Display results by (double-)click-to-open.

Additionally, it would be a bonus if the program could:
- Display the number of hits per file
- Display terse hit results adjacent to each found file
- Search file types besides flat text (eg: .doc, .pdf, .xls, etc.)
- Search within archives (eg: .zip, .rar)
- Include a built-in document viewer

Pre-indexing is assumed. All other things being equal, the best program
should search *fast*, and have a clean, intuitive, easy-to-use interface.

I have seen a variety of programs of this type at various download
websites, and have even tried a few, but I've never really been entirely
happy with what I've tried. So I am looking for user suggestions and
opinions, as I haven't been able to find a good list on this subject
through web searching.

Thanks in advance for your help. Again, if this isn't the right group
for this question, my apologies and request for a better group.

 

[-½cut]

I have a sizeable personal archive of text documents, and I am looking
for the best program to search those files for combinations of words
and phrases. (If this question would be better suited to another
group, please kindly direct me.)

<<thnip>>

This one meets some, but not all of your specs:
http://www.inforapid.com/html/searchreplace.htm

 

[Blinky the Shark]

This one meets some, but not all of your specs:
http://www.inforapid.com/html/searchreplace.htm

That's a heckuva program. One of my faves from the MS world, in there
with Proxo and Xnews and Tiny/nowKerio.

 

[msd13]

<<thnip>>

This one meets some, but not all of your specs:
http://www.inforapid.com/html/searchreplace.htm

That I expect is enough, very nice program that ! I'll mention Agent
Ransack again anyway - the easiest to use free GREP utility with a GUI
I've seen on windows so far, adds itself to the start/find menu and I
like that, easy to get to blah blah blah.

http://www.agentransack.com/

Pity that in the found words index when clicking on a word it doesn't
open a new window, take you to the exact line and highlight all
instances of that word. Theres an editor I know of that does that but
it's not free.

 

[Artful999]

Pity that in the found words index when clicking on a word it doesn't
open a new window, take you to the exact line and highlight all
instances of that word. Theres an editor I know of that does that but
it's not free.

Which editor might that be?

 

[msd13]

Which editor might that be?

Emsoft EmEditor 3.x. (shareware).

 

[Spoon2001]

I have a sizeable personal archive of text documents, and I am looking
for the best program to search those files for combinations of words
and phrases. (If this question would be better suited to another
group, please kindly direct me.)

If you have Windows XP, you could use Indexing Service.

I have also seen a program called X1 (formerly called FIND) highly praised.
http://www.x1.com . There is a freeware and a pro version.

Good luck!

 

[Artful999]

If you have Windows XP, you could use Indexing Service.

Ok, suppose I wanted to search for files containing the following
sentence:

"He brought a brown dog."

But I'm not sure of the color, so I want to search for any color, like:

"He brought a (*) dog."

Or suppose I'm not sure if the animal is even a dog. Perhaps it was a
hog, so I want to search for:

"He brought a (*) ?og."

And further suppose that my memory is so dim that I can't recall if there
were any additional adjectives in the sentence, so I want to search for:

"He brought a (*) (*) ?og." (In the case where I know it's 2 words)
or...
"He brought a (*)...(*) ?og." (In the case of multiple, but not infinite
words)

And finally, did he bring the animal, did he buy the animal, or did he
find the animal? That search would be:

"He (b*ught OR found) a (*)...(*) ?og."

Using whichever terms or symbols are appropriate, can XP's indexing
service (without scripts) do those kinds of searches on file contents?

I have also seen a program called X1 (formerly called FIND) highly
praised. http://www.x1.com . There is a freeware and a pro version.

I'll look into it - thanks.

 

[Ninou]

I have a sizeable personal archive of text documents, and I am looking
for the best program to search those files for combinations of words and
phrases. (If this question would be better suited to another group,
please kindly direct me.)

you can test Wilbur

http://wilbur.redtree.com/features.htm

 

[Artful999]

you can test Wilbur

http://wilbur.redtree.com/features.htm

Amazing looking program, and free to boot! I will definitely give this a
test drive. Thank you!