How can I get Microsoft's Search to properly search inside text based files that don't have a .txt extension?

Question

I am working with another software vendors sample .java files (a couple hundred) and occasionally need to find one that demonstrates how to use their API. Their API set has over 10,000 objects and the documentation unfortunately is, more often than not, lacking details (i.e. a method takes "int arg1, int arg2" but really they are wanting some sort of enumerated object).

I have done both explicit searches (*.java) and open searches (*.*) to find files containing keywords but the Microsoft search does not find files that contain the words. If I manually search the files, I can see plenty of them that contain the words, but I don't really want to rely on a manual search when the OS has a search capability (just not working as expected).

Any thoughts on a default configuration that needs to happen? Does another option exist? I'm using Eclipse as my IDE and can search my project directory but these are sample files and I don't want to pull them all into my project just to do a search.

Forgot to mention the OS version is MS Windows XP Professional (32bit).

Oh, the problem isn't just .java files but this is where I commonly encounter the problem.

The directory structure holding the files goes about 10-12 levels deep with only the "Program Files" portion containing a space in the name. When I perform the search, I'm at the 4th level in the structure.

No answers after 6 days. Should I switch to using Google Desktop's search capabilities to fix the problem? I'm concerned about doing so as I'm not comfortable with how Google Desktop seems to handle sensitive information in it's index. I don't seem to have another option without doing my searches in my development application (which isn't necessarily the ideal situation for switching between applications).

Answer 1

I'm not a big fan of Microsoft's search so I don't use it very often and I'm not an expert by any means. So these are just some random thoughts based on search parameters used by Google (and most other full-text search engines.) Google makes big use of the Boolean modifiers + (must include), - (must not include), | (pipe symbol, to specify or), and finally ~ (synonym). And specific phrases are enclosed in quotes.

+"three blind mice" -"see how they run"

is a simple search indicator that specifies the search must include the words "three blind mice" but must not include "see how they run".

Since I'm not an expert, I don't know if Microsoft's search engine uses special syntaxes like Google. One of Google's nicer syntaxes is intext: which finds query words in the text of a webpage only and not in the page's HTML. The "three blind mice" example could also be written as:

"three blind mice" intext:java

which theoretically would look for the words "three blind mice" in all Java Webpages.

I don't know if any of this will help you but I thought I'd throw it out there just in case you feel like experimenting.

ADDED: It's early in the morning and I'm not yet finished with my first pot of coffee so I just thought of another possibility. If you can create a separate folder with those couple hundred .java files, you might be able to use a separate search utility on just that one folder to search for specific info inside the individual files. Either the built in Microsoft search or a free search utility from Copernic (that I find to be more powerful than Microsoft's.)

http://www.copernic.com/en/products/desktop%2Dsearch/screenshots.html

wwbgd

Answer 2

.checklist identifies the document as a notice checklist which would be formatted with each and every of the goodies on the Formatting toolbar and makes use of "notice wrap." .txt is a ordinary text fabric document. in case you have ever opened one you will see that it particularly is quite like the old typed fabric -- a carriage return (enter) on the tip of each and every line. No fancy formatting. some classes which won't be able to comprehend a notice checklist will open it in case you keep the notice checklist as a text fabric document.