voidtools forum

My Everything is searching the path, even though path searching is disabled.

For example, if I search for "D:\med", the hits include "D:\med\myfile.doc".

Toggling "ctrl-U" to enable and disable path searching doesn't change the results. There are no filters or bookmarks in use.

Is this something to do with the drive specifier D: ? How can I configure Everything to search without including the path?

Including a \ in your search will force-enable-match-path.

I'm curious, what are you expecting D:\med to match?

My intention is to find a file within the folders of a given path.

I enable path searching, specify the path "D:\med" and also a file name. Wouldn't that work?

How else might I do this more effectively?

With Match Path disabled, please try searching for the following:

D:\med\ myfile.doc
This will limit results to under your D:\med folder AND match only files containing myfile.doc


-or-

D: myfile.doc
This will limit results to the D: drive AND match only files containing myfile.doc



You don't need to enable match path if you specify a drive letter or path with a \
Match Path is only useful if you wanted the following to match d:\med\myfile.doc

d med myfile.doc

Note: there is no : or \ in this search.



Please note that you also need to escape spaces with double quotes (") when search for a path.

For example:

"C:\Program Files" Everything

Without the double quotes, Everything will try to find files/folders containing Files under C:\Program

Thank you for the very useful info.

By the way, is it possible to specify a path search using \ but where the search text is not at the start or end of a folder name (within the path)?

If you are using Everything 1.5, use \\ instead of \

For example, the following search will match C:\Windows\system32

wind\\tem32

(basically \\ is replaced with **\** and disables whole filename matching)



For example, the following search will match D:\med\myfile.doc

d\\ed\ myfile.doc



To match paths when using a \ but ignore the \ character:

• Copy and paste the following into the Everything 1.5 search box:
  /path_search_type=2
• Press ENTER in the Everything search box.
• If successful, path_search_type=2 is shown in the status bar for a few seconds.
  \ is now replaced with **\** and disables whole filename matching

path_search_type

The "\\" will be useful.

It packs some useful searching into very few characters.

Thank you.

I have encountered a strange situation. I have a folder called "replacement boiler" (without quotation marks).

Everything 1.5 can find that folder when I search for "\ replacement" but not when I search for "\\ replacement".

Is this supposed to happen?

Yes.

Paths starting with \\ in Everything are treated as an absolute path.
Everything will treat \\replacement as an absolute path.

\\server\share is an absolute path to the "share" folder on "server".
\\replacement would search for a computer called replacement on your network.

Please try:

replacement\\


or even shorter:

replace\\



Another example:
win\\sys\\hosts matches C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
\\win\\sys\\hosts will not match C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
because \\win is an absolute path.

void wrote: ↑Wed Aug 31, 2022 12:02 am To match paths when using a \ but ignore the \ character:

• Copy and paste the following into the Everything 1.5 search box:
  /path_search_type=2
• Press ENTER in the Everything search box.
• If successful, path_search_type=2 is shown in the status bar for a few seconds.
  \ is now replaced with **\** and disables whole filename matching

I have been reminding myself of the theory in this thread and I wonder if the following line (quoted above) is correct.

\ is now replaced with **\** and disables whole filename matching

Should that line be as follows, starting with a double slash?

\\ is now replaced with **\** and disables whole filename matching

No, only a single slash is required when using mode 2.

Use mode 0 to convert \\ to **\**