File Search Classic
"File search without animated animals"
Version 1.9.0.62
The original motivation behind this application was my desire to bring back Windows 98 search. Windows 98 sucked, but the search application was clean, simple and it worked. I hated the less than functional "new" Windows 2000/XP style search - and it's never improved, IMHO. I DON'T want file indexing in the background; I DON'T want brain dead wizards; I DON'T want cute animations. I DO want easily recallable search criteria; I DO want to easily select multiple folder trees; I DO want regular expression text searches; etc (see list of features below)
I have been using this on all my computers, many times every day, for over ten years (I can't stand using anything else), slowly stamping bugs and adding features, but have never published it until now (2014). It was written in VisualBasic 6. I have looked into porting it to a more modern language, but the task is a bit overwhelming. Any dot-NET implementation would require a number of nasty hacks to implement all the Windows Explorer Shell functionality, and my C++ is pretty rusty. So here it is, as is, at last. Just in time for the demise of the Windows desktop!
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Copyright © 2003-2016 Lindsay Bigelow
Distribute Freely with Attribution
(Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike)
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/
Project Home Page
https://sourceforge.net/projects/filesearchclassic/
Contact me:
http://encodingtalk.com/members/raffriff.580/
http://forum.doom9.org/member.php?u=206729
http://sourceforge.net/u/raffriff42/profile/
Special thanks to:
- Brad Martinez
"How to display the "Browse for Folder" dialog box"
http://btmtz.mvps.org/browsdlg
"Extending the functionality of the VB ListView controls"
http://btmtz.mvps.org/listview/
"Tooltip: Dynamically create a real tooltip..."
http://btmtz.mvps.org/tooltip/
- Larry Rebich
"Sort Icon in ListView Header"
http://www.larryrebich.com/v05n07/v05n07.html
"Show a File's Associated Icon in a ListView"
http://www.larryrebich.com/v06n09/v06n09.html
Open Icon Library (authors unknown)
http://openiconlibrary.sourceforge.net/
- and many others
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Features:
Multiple language support:
- No translations currently available: translators needed!
- see "{app}\Lang\-pot-v1.9.0.txt" for a quick start guide for translators,
viewable online at http://tinyurl.com/filesearchclassic-langpot
Windows Shell Integration:
- launch by right-clicking a folder
Windows Explorer Shell functionality:
- Drag and drop from the search results to another window
- Right click context menu: open with, rename, delete, properties etc
Results list:
- columns are sizable, sortable etc as you would expect.
- Icon, List or Detail view
Export Search Results (File, Export list)
- selectable columns, header etc
- export to file or clipboard
Direct Search - No Indexing
- up-to-the-minute results.
- no background tasks
- more complete results - nothing hidden by default..
- search can paused and resumed.
Text Search:
- brute force text search (no Windows as a middleman/gatekeeper)
- search (crudely) in binary files
- regular expression search (see "Text to find" below)
Custom File Viewer/Editor:
Override Windows' default double-click action and edit or view
the file with the program of your choice. When searching for text
in files, you can use this to jump to the appropriate line.
Optional sound alerts:
- sound to play on search success (one of the standard Windows sounds)
- sound to play on 1st result
- sound to play on search failure
"File Names" search criteria combo box:
- Wild cards '?' and '*' accepted, per DOS & Windows standard.
- Multiple patterns allowed, delimited with a '|' character (eg *.txt|*.doc)
- Specify an "exclusion pattern" like this:
/example
- Exclusion patterns override all other patterns, so
*.txt|/junk
finds all text files EXCEPT those with the string "junk" in their names.
(No wildcards are allowed with exclusions.)
- For troublesome patterns like " s p a c e ", enclose in brackets, like this:
< s p a c e >
(No wildcards are allowed with brackets.)
- Special patterns >text, >audio and >video
(For example, >text finds all "text-like" files, such as .ini, .cpp, .html, etc)
(default set of "text-like" extensions is supplied, but user can easily edit it)
- Three user-defined special patterns: >1, >2, >3 or custom names may be created.
- See the Options dialog for more on the special >text, >audio, (etc) patterns.
- Remembers your last 64 entries
"Text to find" search criteria combo box:
- If not empty, look for text in files.
- If "Search Pattern" is checked, search using simple '?' and '*' patterns.
- If "Regular Expressions" is checked, search using regular expressions.
(see Microsoft Developer Network, 'Regular Expression Syntax')
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ae5bf541%28v=vs.90%29.aspx
- Remembers your last 64 entries
"Path(s)" search criteria combo box:
- Multiple paths allowed, delimited with a '|' character.
- Use the browse [...] button to find and add paths.
- Wild cards '?' and '*' accepted for the final folder, after the rightmost backslash.
- Specify an "exclusion pattern" like this:
/example
- Exclusion patterns override all other patterns, so
C:\|D:\|/TEMP
ignores all folders with the string "TEMP" in their names.
(No wildcards are allowed with exclusions.)
- Understands environment variables like %temp% and %path%
- Remembers your last 64 entries
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Limitations and Bugs:
Text Search in Proprietary File Formats:
Not supported. File Search Classic searches for raw strings in files. If you want to search for text in Office documents, PDFs etc, this program is not for you. There are no plans to implement this feature.
File Operations in Multiple Folders:
Although File Search Classic implements the Windows Explorer Shell almost completely, and even augments it a bit, it has a problem with file operations (move, delete etc) on search results in multiple folders. This will be fixed in the next release. [EDIT: it's 2019, hasn't happened yet] Meanwhile you can either do your file operations in one folder at a time, or fall back to using Windows Search.
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Version history (partial)
1.0 3/6/98 (as FindInDWG)
1.1 5/2003 - general purpose file search; added OpenWith, etc
1.3 8/2010 - replaced Regexp library
1.31 1/2011 - revise sorting code
1.5 1/2011 - sort indicator icon, file icons, shell commands,
misc enhancements
1.6 2/2011 - user-defined filename patterns; pause/resume;
true shell context menu
1.7 3/2011 - choose editor; improved sorting;
FileLister3.dll (faster)
1.8 4/2011 - run-time menus;
improved Unicode handling w/ FileLineReader.dll
1.9 7/2014 - multi-line tooltips; fix some small annoyances
1.9.0.17 11/2014 - fixed error opening found folders
1.9.0.18 12/2014 - fixed export error after renaming file(s)
1.9.0.20 2/2015 - minor bug fixes
1.9.0.33 4/2016 - fails to restore from taskbar: fixed (new issue: slow searching)
1.9.0.58 4/2016 - fix 0.33 slow searching; revert to 0.20 w/ minor bug fix
1.9.0.62 2/2019 - minor bug fix; increase number of combo box items
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