Search without wild cards

[Howard Brazee]

I want to use the GUI Search utility to look for all occurrences of "My File"
without finding any "Your File" matches.

How do I do this?

 

[nut cracker]

doesnt appear that you can.

write a script to do it with PERL or VBscript. You can put a GUI on either
one.

NuTs

 

[Gary Smith]

I want to use the GUI Search utility to look for all occurrences of "My File"
without finding any "Your File" matches.
How do I do this?

Doe it not work if you do just that -- specify the file name in quotes?
If that doesn't do it for you, give us more detail on what you're
searching for and what undesired hits you get.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Doe it not work if you do just that -- specify the file name in quotes?
If that doesn't do it for you, give us more detail on what you're
searching for and what undesired hits you get.

OK, I just created the following two files:
C:\My File.txt
C:\Your File.txt

I Hit Start\Search and entered
"My File"
and pressed search now.
Nothing found

I entered
My File
and pressed search now, found scads of files including the two above.

Entered
'My File'
and found no matches.


I tried from the search screen and from the CMD prompt various combinations such
as

'My File'*.*

 

[Howard Brazee]

doesn't appear that you can.

Odd limitation.

write a script to do it with PERL or VBscript. You can put a GUI on either
one.

I would have to buy and learn these tools. The GUI isn't necessary, I'm
comfortable with .BAT files and command lines. I've heard that there are Unix
style tools available that can allow grep.

 

[Dan Seur]

I'm not sure what exactly you're searching for, but if
there is any constant char string distinction between
myfile and yourfile you can surround that char string
with wildcards. Without such a constant - in other words
if all filenames are generated with no embedded ownership
indicator in the "filename.extension" fields (and no other
distincive characteristics like folder placement - I give
up.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I'm not sure what exactly you're searching for, but if
there is any constant char string distinction between
myfile and yourfile you can surround that char string
with wildcards. Without such a constant - in other words
if all filenames are generated with no embedded ownership
indicator in the "filename.extension" fields (and no other
distincive characteristics like folder placement - I give
up.

Look at the following directory. I want to look for every copy of "My File.*"
or even "My File.txt" that is on my system. I do not want to find "Your
File.txt".


Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

P:\>c:

C:\>dir *.txt
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is EC2D-38F5

Directory of C:\

06/17/2002 07:13a 0 COMLOG.txt
04/22/2004 07:43a 0 Your File.txt
04/22/2004 07:43a 0 My File.txt
3 File(s) 0 bytes
0 Dir(s) 3,851,034,624 bytes free

C:\>

 

[Dan Seur]

Embedded spaces appear to creat problems of which I was unaware.

On my W2k using Explorer search, with a "My File.txt" and a "Your
File.txt" I just created in a folder with a few hundred other files,
when I have that folder selected in Search:
My File.* finds only My File.txt
My File.txt finds My File.txt AND Your File.txt
My?File.txt finds only My File.txt
*y?F*.* finds only My File.txt
*My*.* finds only My File.txt
(No other filename has the string "my")
However:
Your File.* finds Your File.txt AND a PDF filename containing "Your"
Your File.txt finds BOTH the above two AND My File.txt
(I conclude the space is a logical delimiter, maybe undocumented. The
search code may be relict of the old 8.3 convention. The search
finds all instances of unbroken char strings.)
Your?File.txt finds only Your File.txt
You get the idea...

Using the "?" wildcard in Search - which says "any, but only one,
character here" - may help solve your problem if used cleverly enough.
It depends on how those files are actually named.

I'd like to know how you actually get this solved to your satisfaction.

I'm not sure what exactly you're searching for, but if
there is any constant char string distinction between
myfile and yourfile you can surround that char string
with wildcards. Without such a constant - in other words
if all filenames are generated with no embedded ownership
indicator in the "filename.extension" fields (and no other
distincive characteristics like folder placement - I give
up.

Look at the following directory. I want to look for every copy of "My File.*"
or even "My File.txt" that is on my system. I do not want to find "Your
File.txt".


Microsoft Windows 2000 [Version 5.00.2195]
(C) Copyright 1985-2000 Microsoft Corp.

P:\>c:

C:\>dir *.txt
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is EC2D-38F5

Directory of C:\

06/17/2002 07:13a 0 COMLOG.txt
04/22/2004 07:43a 0 Your File.txt
04/22/2004 07:43a 0 My File.txt
3 File(s) 0 bytes
0 Dir(s) 3,851,034,624 bytes free

C:\>

 

[Gary Smith]

OK, I just created the following two files:
C:\My File.txt
C:\Your File.txt

Both "My file*" and "My file.*" (with the quotes) will find My file.txt
but not Your file.txt. The first form also finds My files.txt; the second
does not.

 

[Howard Brazee]

Using the "?" wildcard in Search - which says "any, but only one,
character here" - may help solve your problem if used cleverly enough.
It depends on how those files are actually named.

I'd like to know how you actually get this solved to your satisfaction.

I believe you're right about spaces. This works, with Windows GUI and with the
CMD prompt, thanks.


My trouble was working too much on mainframes. I tried using a single character
wild card - but I used % instead of ?, which obviously didn't work.

I just tried a third party File Finder and it doesn't have this bug.