When you first start the program you will notice that two program windows are opened. The first window lets you configure the search parameters, the second displays the results.

When you look at the search window, you will notice that it offers a lot of search options. You only need to select at least one base folder for the search though to get started, as everything else is optional. The program supports multiple base folders for the search, as well as file, folder and extension exclusions. You could for instance search only for doc or docx files on all hard drives and partitions connected to the computer. And while those options are handy enough, you can use the program to search for file contents in text or binary form as well.

That’s still not everything there is to search. How does searching in alternate data streams sound? Or parameters that take the file size, file attributes or creation, modification or access time into consideration?

SearchMyFiles stops by default after the first ten thousand matching files it finds, with an option to set a different limit or no limit at all.

The Search Mode menu defines how results are displayed in the search window.

• Standard Search – Displays a list of files matching the query.
• Duplicate Search Mode – Will display only duplicate files in the search results.
• Non-Duplicates Search Mode – Displays all files that are unique.
• Summary Mode – Displays information for each folder included in the scan.

All search modes share the same layout. Details are displayed for each result, including the file or folder name, location on the computer, size and time related information.

The program comes with the usual Nirsoft tools to create HTML reports and to export the data to text, xml or csv files.

One interesting option, available under Options > Open File on Double Click, allows you to open any file in the search results listing with a double-click. This can be handy to verify duplicate files or to open the file that you were looking for.

A command line version supporting the majority of search parameters is available as well.

Windows users can download Search My Files from the official Nirsoft website. The program is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit version.

In this article I am going to introduce you to the grep command and how it is used. Once you know this command, your life with the Linux command line will be made much easier.

Limitations

Although grep is a very versatile command to know, it does have its limitations. One of the biggest limitations it has is that it can not search within binary files. That’s all fine, because your typical binary file would be searchable with the application that created said binary file.

Grep also has a line limit of 2048 lines. This means if your file is beyond that, grep will stop searching at the line limit.

Installation

You are in luck. Grep is a tool that comes pre-installed with all Linux distributions. So no installation is required.

Usage

The basic usage of grep is:

grep [OPTIONS] [PATTERN] file

Their are numerous options to use with the Grep command. The more helpful of these options are:

-E Interpret the PATTERN section as an extended regular expression.
-P Interpret the PATTERN section as a Perl regular expression.
-e Use PATTERN as the pattern. If searching a single PATTERN you do not need the -e option. But this option allows you to search for multiple search patterns.
-f  Obtain patterns from a file, one per line.
-i Ignore case.
-c Suppress normal output and only output count of matching lines.
--color Display the matched strings in color.
-n Display the line number associated with the matching entry.

Examples

Let’s take a look at a very basic example first. You want to search the file /etc/test.conf for the string input. The grep command for this would be:

grep input /etc/test.conf

Now, let’s say that test.conf is a larger file and you need to know the line number the string input is on. For this the command would look like:

grep -n input /etc/test.conf

The above output would then include the line number associated with each matching entry. Now, let’s say you wanted to search the same file for both input and output and you want to know the line numbers associated with each. For this the command would look like:

grep -n -e input -e output /etc/test.conf

But what if you only want to know how many times the string input is found in the file /etc/test.conf. For this you could use the command like so:

grep -c input /etc/test.conf

Final thoughts

Grep is one of those commands that you will use time and again, in many, various ways. I always tell new users that, once you reach the point where you begin using the command line, grep is one of the first commands you should master.

We have reviewed our fair share of desktop search tools in the past from Everything and Index Your Files to the desktop search tool Puggle and Doc Fetcher.

Agent Ransack is another search software for the Windows operating system that is provided as a 32-bit and 64-bit version. Unlike most of the other tools it does not need to index files prior to running searches. That’s good for the application’s resource footprint but means that the search speed is lower than those of search engines that make use of indexing.

Searches can be started right after installing the program. Filters aid the user in finding files faster on the computer system. It is for instance possible to search for a filename, specify directories, minimum and maximum sizes as well as dates (modified, created, last accessed).

The search tool supports regular expressions and can search the contents of supported files as well which takes longer than just searching for file names. Agent Ransack can search all file types, even binary files, for relevant text entered in the search form by the user of the application. Adobe PDF, Microsoft Office (including Office 2007) and OpenOffice documents are specifically supported by the search software.

A regular expression tester is included in the application to aid inexperienced users with the configuration of their searches that make use of regular expressions.

Agent Ransack is an interesting alternative to the desktop search tools mentioned above. Its file search is relatively fast as long as it is not searching for text in the file’s contents. It is recommended to limit the directory as narrow as possible to speed up the search processing.

The software program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s homepage over at Mythicsoft.

The index is automatically compressed by the file search software which does not noticeably affect the speed of the program.

Several filters are provided in the program’s interface. It is possible to search by name, file extension, time period, file contents or file sizes.

The program can maintain multiple indexes which can be searched together or individually. All results are displayed in the same interface with their name, folder, file extension, size, data and database the entry was found.

Selected files are automatically shown in the preview area. Not all files can be previewed but it works fine for images and plain text documents but not other formats like Microsoft Word or Excel files.

Several controls are available at the bottom of the search interface that can be used to open files, add them to the clipboard, copy, move or delete files and to export the selected files to a csv file.

One interesting option is the import of search databases which offers another interesting application: Searching the databases that have been created on other computer systems. All that needs to be done to do that is to create the index on another computer system and import that index of the files in the program. This is even easier than it sounds because of the portability of the file search application.

The search is not as fast as that of other Windows file search tools like Everything but the additional options might make the program interesting for users who prefer the features provided by Index Your Files.

Index Your Files can be downloaded from the developer’s website. A language pack for additional languages such as German or Spanish is provided by the software developer as well.

Tag 2 Find uses a different approach. It brings the tags known from indexing websites to the computer desktop. It is currently available in a preview version for the Windows operating system. Users who have been using services like Delicious and Flickr or run their own blog will be immediately comfortably with the software program. Any file located on the computer system can be tagged by the user. No user would want to tag all files as this would mean to work with hundreds of thousands of files which could take a lifetime. The software program can assist the user by automatically suggesting tags based on file names, directory names, file extensions and even metadata for multimedia files.

It is furthermore possible to include and exclude drives from the program completely. The software program will display a wizard after installation that is walking the user through the first initial configuration. The user can pick drives, directories and files that he wants to tag right away. Tag 2 Find can also be integrated in Windows Explorer to add tags right away for selected files.

It would be impracticable if the application window would have to be opened to search the files and tags. The application is therefor offering a floating transparent search window that can be moved around on the computer desktop. Entering tags into that search form will open another transparent connected window that is displaying the results which include hits, partial hits and related tags. A click on a resulting tag will show all the file names that have been tagged with the word or phrase.

Tag 2 Find can monitor the computer system for new files. The folders that are monitored can be defined in the application. It is for instance monitoring the Windows Clipboard and will display files that are copied to it for a while waiting for user input.

Additional options that might be interesting for some users are access to a tag cloud, automatic category management for selected file types, color coding tabs, drag and drop support plus import and export options for tags. It is really surprising how stable and extensive this early version of the software program is.

The only downside is the rather large resource usage. The software program uses roughly 23 Megabytes of computer memory while displaying the floating tags search box and about 53 Megabytes of virtual memory. Tag 2 Find runs on Windows XP or Windows Vista and requires the Microsoft .net Framework 2.0, an NTFS formatted file system (at least on the partitions that contain files that the user wants to tag and administrative privileges during installation.

There are a couple of searching tools that immediately come to mind to take care of your searching needs. The first tool is locate and the second is find. I much prefer the former tool because it is much faster. But both tools can do the job. Both tools are run from the command line and can be run as either the root or a standard user. Let’s take a quick look at each.

Locate

The locate command does not actually search through the directory hierarchy. What locate does is search through a database for the files you are looking for.  Because of this the search is faster. But because it uses a database that means the database has to be updated in order for new to show up in results (or deleted files to not show up in results). So before you actually start using this command you will want to update the database. In order to update the database used by locate you need to issue the command updatedb. It might be wise to set up a cron job to have the database updated regularly (as most of us won’t remember to update the database as often as it is necessary.)

Once you have the database updated you are ready to search. The locate command is simple:

locate FILENAME

(Where FILENAME is the actual name of the file you are searching.

Naturally there are switches you can use with the command. The most useful of these are:

(NOTE: Switches will be proceeded by the “-” character.)

• c – Instead of writing the resulting names it writes the number of matches found.
• d – Use a different database than the default.
• i – Ignore case
• r – Use a regular expression.

The last switch should really raise the eyebrows of the hard core at heart. The locate command can use regular expressions which makes this command VERY useful.

Find

Unlike the locate command, find does search through the filesystem hierarchy. Because of this find is much slower than locate. But also because of this, there is no need to update a database. So the find command always will have the most up-to-date results.

The syntax of the find command is very similar to that of locate.

find FILENAME

Where FILENAME is the actual name of the file name to search.

And, like locate (and nearly every Linux command), there are switches to enhance the usability. The most useful of these switches are:

(NOTE: Switches will be proceeded  by the “-” character.)

• L – Follow symbolic links
• delete – Will delete the found files.
• exec ; COMMAND FILENAME- Will execute the COMMAND on the FILENAME.

The find command is actually quite a bit more complex than locate. Because find’s actually purpose is to examine files (the end results can be found files), find does much more. But for command line file searching, it does perform admirably.

Final Thoughts

My preferences is to use locate. I always use locate before I will use a gui search tool. I trust the results, the results are faster, and often more accurate (so long as I have updated the database.) Give either of these tools a try. You will most likely be happy with the results (unless, of course, you can’t find the file you’re trying to locate.)

The Cavern Links Checker has been developed as a links checker for the Cavern’s forum but has been expanded since then to check links anywhere on the Internet pointing to various file hosts like Rapidhsare, Megashare or Megaupload.

A total of 13 different file hosters are currently supported by the script. Since the link checker works on every Internet site it comes in handy for users who use search engines to find files on sites like Rapidshare but also for users who frequent forums or websites with their own databases.

Firefox users will have to download and install the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox before installing the user script. Google Chrome users can take a look at the Google Chrome Greasemonkey article while Opera users can do the same at Greasemonkey in Opera. Internet Explorer users might want to take a look at Trixie to add Greasemonkey support.

Windows Search is basically a desktop search application much like Google’s Desktop Search. It builds an index of the files – and other information like emails – on the system after installation which takes some time depending on the size of the hard disks and the amount of files stored on them. Some users reported indexing times of several hours in previous versions of Windows Search.

It does take this long because Windows Search does not only index file names and attributes but also file contents for selected files including most text formats like Word and HTML documents but also media files like images and video formats.

I still prefer Locate32 which is resource friendly and faster in my opinion.

The two parameters that you always have to select are a path and a search term that you want to find, every other parameter is optional. Search results begin to appear immediately while other files are still processed. The time it takes to process all files depends on the size of the hard drive(s), the cpu, ram, files on disk and several other factors. It is still fast enough and responsive so that it is possible to work with the search results even if the search is still going on.

Search queries are not only compared to filenames but also with file contents. This is extremely useful if you are looking for documents that contain a specific phrase. The line containing the phrase is shown in the search results together with the filename and path of the file.

Fileseek offers a few functions that allow users to refine their searches. Files and Filetypes can be included or excluded in the search. This feature supports wildcards and multiple entries.

Regular Expressions are supported in the search queries. This is a powerful advanced feature of Fileseek. Best of all though is the size of Fileseek. It’s tiny with only 186 Kilobyte unpacked.

Fileseek uses a different approach than my favorite search utility Locate32. Locate32 uses a database that has to be updated regularly. The benefit of this approach is a blazing fast search, much faster than that of Fileseek. If you do not search that often Fileseek might be the better alternative.

I did mention Locate before here at Ghacks and thought that this awesome program deserves another article. The software developer is constantly working on Locate and he has added several new functions since the last time that I wrote a review about it. The biggest change in this new version of Locate is the Find as you type function. Locate does not wait anymore until the user presses the submit button to find files or text in files but presents results immediately.

You can still filter results in so many ways that it would take ten articles to explain all the options. It is possible to filter by file size, file date, extension and file path for instance. Normal file searches take about a second before all results are displayed, it takes a bit longer to search for content in files naturally but it is fast as well if you consider that all files on all hard drives can be searched.

I would suggest to schedule daily updates for Locate if you have the intention to use it regularly. You can either configure this option in Locate but the application has to be running to start the file update process on its own or you can use the task scheduler of Windows to update the Locate database regularly.

The second kind of site tends to be more up to date because they use several sources for finding new Rapidshare files including user submitted ones. I do not like the first kind of sites to search Rapidshare that much because I can enter those parameters by myself into a search engine like Google and get the desired results.

To be able to compare the Rapidshare search engines I have performed searches for the terms “video”, “avi” and “windows”. Finding files is one thing but finding working files on file hosting websites and keeping the file database up to date deleting files that have been removed from the file hosting website properly is another. This has also been born in mind.

I did check three results for each search term, namely the first, fifth and tenth entry to see if the links were not broken.

A basic search engine and site that does nothing more than to offer a search form and a results page.

Video: More than 5000 results. Gave no exact number unfortunately. All three results that I tested were valid and could be downloaded.

Avi: This search revealed more than 5000 results as well. All three results worked fine.

Windows: The search revealed 2096 results, the test downloads were working.

Removed because of Zango Ads on site

Removed as well.

Offers Web and Database search for files hosted on Rapidshare. Offers additional functions that increase the value of this service. Has a Rapidshare link checker for instance and offers keyword email updates.

Video: 1471 links were found in their database for the term video. Passed all three test downloads.

Avi: Not found in their database.

Windows: 2100 links found for the term Windows. All three downloads were working fine.

A basic search engine that seems somewhat slow at this time. You can limit the file size of the files that are displayed in the search results. Users can report broken links.

Video: 500+ results found. All three tests were working.

Avi: 500+ results found. All three tests successful.

Windows: 500+ results found. All three tests successful.

Is not displaying the amount of search results. Search is tag driven and the file size is shown for each file. Is listing dead files as well, wonder what that is good for. Great Speed.

Video: Does not list the amount of results. Test were fine.

Avi: Does not list the amount of results. Test were fine.

Windows: Does not list the amount of results. Test were fine.

Alternatives:

RapidShare Data
Xoogo

The alternative Rapidshare Search Engines have been added because some of the initial sites have been deleted or added malicious software to their sites.

It scans your hard drives initially for all files, writes them to a database and offers a basic search form that can be spiced up with advanced search options. The basic search lets you search for filenames, extensions and specific locations on your hard drive. Advanced search parameters let you specify minimum and maximum file sizes, file age and other parameters like searching for files and folders or matching names only.

After the initial scan which takes a few minutes normally all search results are presented in 1-2 seconds. The speed is really incredibly and it is well worth using it. I wish there was a way to replace the Windows search with Locate for Windows.

Locate comes with its own scheduler that can update the file database on a regular basis. Those updates don’t take long because only new files will be added to the database (and old removed). There are so many options available that it would take a book to describe them all.

To sum it up. Locate is the best file search for Windows that I encountered so far. A must have software.

Read More:

Locate for Windows
Locate Introduction (Screencast from Donation Coder)

This ensures that most pages with invalid files will be removed from your search results.

Update: This may require some explanation after all. When you run searches on sites such as Google or Bing, you can make use of advanced parameters that further define what you are looking for. The minus sign parameter at the top avoids results that have the words forbidden, inactivity, found or deleted on the page.

The reason for excluding those words is simple: You do not want results displayed in Google that are pointing to invalid downloads. And downloads that are no longer working are usually highlighted with those words, e.g. the file has been deleted.

You can use the same principle for other file hosting sites, or to further refine your Rapidshare searches.

Please note that Google has recently begun to block Rapidshare and other file hosting site results from its search engine. If you run a search like site:rapidshare.com linux on Google you are presented with no file results at all, only a few core pages of the service that are not used for hosting at all.

If you run the same query on Bing, you will notice that Microsoft’s search engine offers more results. It is still a low amount of results though. Most search engines censor or filter out search results for file hosting sites nowadays.

You may need to use specialized search engines and file databases instead to find files on Rapidshare. Just search for “Rapidshare search engine” or “Rapidshare files” to find those sites. They come and go fairly quickly usual, and it makes no sense to link to a service from here that may not be there anymore tomorrow.

The tool is also able to test websites for security holes using the google cache. You can search for webstats, usernames, passwords, logs and much more.

A nice feature is that you are able to test and add your own findings to it by simply clicking a button. You can also import searches from other websites. The tool grows with its community.

Enjoy the program, remember to read the Help file first.

If you find errors or bugs or have ideas on how to improve it then tell us about them in our support forum located @ Deny.de

yours truly
Martin and Kenny L

Update: The project is dead. We have not updated the application for a long time, and Ghacks has since then turned to technology related news. We are currently posting an average of five new articles per day, bringing the total article count to more than 1600 articles per year, and the overall count to more than 11,000 articles.

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