searching for text within a file

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alan e
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 7:30 am

searching for text within a file

Post by alan e »

How do I search for text within a file as opposed to just the filename?
void
Developer
Posts: 15237
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: searching for text within a file

Post by void »

Everything does not support searching file contents. Yet...

I have added the content: search function for the next release of Everything so you can search for text inside files.
Hope to have a beta release soon.
alan e
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2015 7:30 am

Re: searching for text within a file

Post by alan e »

Ok thanks
adamantine
Posts: 214
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2012 10:56 am

Re: searching for text within a file

Post by adamantine »

search for text inside files is certainly the option that i wait for eagerly and for a long time

i often have to search for text inside my 26000 cue-files and 500 txt-files
and i noticed that the standard xp search is terribly slow (~20-25 minutes) but only for the 1st time. then it is noticeably faster (2-3 minutes), and sometimes (approximately by the 5-10th search) it may begin to search very quickly (~10 seconds)
so i would like to know: will search inside files in ET be able to spend not more than 5-10 seconds (in my case with those 26500 text files)?

what will be the way ET performs this kind of search?
will ET create something like a constant index-file (related to those 26500 files) in order to search inside files almost instantly?
if yes, will ET automatically and rapidly update that index?
horst.epp
Posts: 1339
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2014 3:24 pm

Re: searching for text within a file

Post by horst.epp »

adamantine wrote:search for text inside files is certainly the option that i wait for eagerly and for a long time

i often have to search for text inside my 26000 cue-files and 500 txt-files
and i noticed that the standard xp search is terribly slow (~20-25 minutes) but only for the 1st time. then it is noticeably faster (2-3 minutes), and sometimes (approximately by the 5-10th search) it may begin to search very quickly (~10 seconds)
so i would like to know: will search inside files in ET be able to spend not more than 5-10 seconds (in my case with those 26500 text files)?

what will be the way ET performs this kind of search?
will ET create something like a constant index-file (related to those 26500 files) in order to search inside files almost instantly?
if yes, will ET automatically and rapidly update that index?
Stop using XP.
In newer systems the Windows indexing will give you fast results for txt files and other type of documents.
As far as I know Everything will not make an index of files contents and therefore it will never be as fast as Windows indexing.
Farnsyboy
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Sep 18, 2018 1:06 pm

Re: searching for text within a file

Post by Farnsyboy »

void wrote:Everything does not support searching file contents. Yet...

I have added the content: search function for the next release of Everything so you can search for text inside files.
Hope to have a beta release soon.

You mentioned that this feature would be available way back in 2009, but I don't see it yet. How do I search inside files?
NotNull
Posts: 5236
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 9:22 pm

Re: searching for text within a file

Post by NotNull »

Like @void already mentioned earlier in this thread:
void wrote:I have added the content: search function for the next release of Everything so you can search for text inside files.
So you can search for:
c:\temp ext:txt;doc content:hello


More info on content searching: https://www.voidtools.com/support/every ... _searching

As an alternative, you can specify content in Menu:Search > Advanced Search
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