#78 searching-in-results NOT working

[aplatypus]

Hi ... I have v4.2.2, Windows 7

When I search within-results for a second string, that seems to work OK. I will use a simple example.

Search: "function".... 73 hits.

Search for Ada comment character:
Search-in-results: "-- " .... 1,290 hits

Search lines without Ada comment character:
Negation, Search-in-results: Nothing!

To be fair the very first, Search-in-results, I tried worked for inclusive but negation Search-in-results has never worked.

While I'm on the topic of "Search-in-results", the User Interface around that function is extremely fragile and that makes it prone to user errors.

I could be wrong in misremembering how the v3 search-in-results (used to work); none the less I'd like to document 'my' preference for a valuable Search-in-results functionality.

1. The basic idea is to work like a chain of piped grep commands or windows find commands.

   • grep "function" *.ada | grep -v "-- "
   • find "function" *.ada | find /v "-- "
   • That gives me a list of all function declarations, lines that contain the word "function" that are not comments. In my example it is a number less than 73.

2. With a graphic interface like AstroGrep, I'd expect to be able to use CONTROL/LEFT-CLICK to multi select the files to search-within-results.

   • That is, deeper search of selected files, not always search all files.

3. The Search-in-Results function looks like-a drop-down list; it doesn't work like a drop-down, that's confusing. At least it was to me.

   • As a drop-down, I'd expect it to be a selector between search (as in new search, search again), and
   • Search-in-Results, as in search only from the results displayed.
   • Allow me to denote the "results displayed" as a "search-context".
   • The way is it now, it is an action and seems to lose my search-context even before I've changed the search options I need for the Search-in-Results operation.

4. The Search-in-Results ought to let me keep searching among the current search-context, so I can have deep searches like multiple greps chains, e.g.:

   • grep "function" .ada | grep -v "-- " | grep "delete" | grep "folder" | etc.*

5. A wish list, it would be lovely if the Search-in-Results could let you:

   • save a search-chain like a "project"
   • allow me to back-up my Search-in-Results to the previous search-context

Finally, I the notion of a search context was just a convenient name. But before I finish, I'd suggest it isn't a result-set; a search-context should be the search-chain to produce the result-set. That way it would work like a command history of grep-chains on the command line.

Since the Search-in-Results is operating at a sub-optimal level, I hope you'll give these User eXperience points serious consideration when tackling this bug.

Regards,

Will

[Jackslade]

Thanks for the search in results report. We'll look into this more (bug fixes if any) and feature enhancements as well. Some of your ideas seem like great requests and we will consider them.

Just for your information and others, the current search in results works by using the list of files in the results list as the source for the search when clicking Search in Results action. So if you want to remove certain result entries, you can right click and select "Remove from list" to further restrict the search in results source.

[Jackslade]

Will try to address a couple of issues reported here, but the major overhaul will now fall under feature request #102.

[Jackslade]

Fixed in v4.4.5 by moving the search in results to be a selectable options and being able to either search against all the files in the list or selecting them.

The rest of the features/changes requested are in a feature request now.