What is the correct “DEVON syntax” to use operators in easyfind?
I’ve tried:
(j)-(eng) j-eng (j) -eng (j) -(eng) “(j)”-eng "(j)-“eng” “(j)-eng” j eng- j- eng “j-eng” j not eng “j” not “eng” (j) not eng and a bunch others and all of these variations return files with both (j) and eng in the name.
I’m soooooo tired of trying to figure this out. Easyfind is now frustratingFind. I only downloaded because of the boolean search feature.
PLEASE tell me what is the correct syntax for saying “filenames with (j) but not eng in their name”.
tman, this is your very first post. Most of the folks here play nice. You will get a much quicker response if you state the problem clearly, in a mild-mannered tone, and NOT blame the software for the troubles you are having.
EasyFind is freeware. “Devon syntax” is familiar to users of the licensed products. If you open a demo of DevonThink Pro and open Tools: Search, you will see a dialogue that explains the ways to build searches.
This was my last resort at trying to figure out how to get the boolean search to work. I apologize for letting my frustrations come across a little heavy.
That this is freeware and is supposed to overcome a serious limitation with tiger (boolean file searching) is a great and I mean great tool for us.
I just think that if it’s going to be released as a standalone app, there needs to be a clearer description in the readme on how to do a boolean search without having to download another app to figure out how to use it.
Again, I just want to be able to search for files with (j) and not eng in the name. Coming from a pretty decent programming background, my thrill at finding an app that does boolean searches and fills a much needed void in Tiger was the other side of the coin as I tried and tried to figure out what the correct syntax was and devolved into quite a crazed frustration, stopping short of actually putting something like “if (”(j) && !“eng”) then".
I guess I’ll have to download a demo of DevonThink to figure it out. Again, sorry about how that came across…
I downloaded the demo of DevonThink Pro and searched through both the help and the tutorial database and can’t find anything out operator syntax. Sigh.
Still pretty frustrated. I’d like to recommend (in a nice way) that if EasyFind is going to be a standalone app, mebbe an example of boolean searching should be included in the readme or if not, bundle it with DevonThink? DevonThink looks like a pretty hardcore database app, but I don’t need that, just a nice small app that can do boolean searches for files until Apple wises up and includes it in the Find dialog of the Finder.
Just can’t seem to figure out the syntax or find documentation on it with the DevonThink demo. Created a new database and selected Tools>Search and no explanation of how to build search strings came up.
Not trying to pissy, just looking at it from the non-DevonThink user’s end here.
OK, I’m not the best person to help on this one, but I’m looking at the ReadMe that I have with EasyFind 3.7 and see a long listing of Options, Wildcards, Operators, etc. which I believe is what “Devon syntax” means.
You are right, the first paragraph refers to “boolean operators” but it could be that Easy Find only understands the expressions as listed in ReadMe, and not the symbols you have been using. If you are using exactly the Operators listed there and not getting results, that is weird.
I’ve not tried to use EasyFind in the manner you are, but the ReadMe does seem to encourage that usage. I’m hoping somebody else can help out. Good luck.
Check the “operators” option and enter “j not eng” (without quotes). Or alternatively…
j -eng
j but not eng
j and not eng
j !eng
…and therefore the syntax of common search engines or the Finder/Help Viewer/Spotlight is possible too. Finally, by default operators are applied to full words.
OK. It’s the full word issue then. All of the “eng” chars are between a + and something else (either a decimal number or a right bracket), with no spaces between. That explains why I was getting results of all the filenames that had “(j)” in the name without the ones that had “eng” in the name being stripped out.
Thanks again for your help and sorry about being pissy. I’d probably spent 30-45 minutes typing in all kinds of variants with operators in a (it seems to turn out) lost cause. All the things I tried that should have worked didn’t and it was really driving me crazy. Didn’t know about the full word req.
On a side note, it’s nice to see the operators designed to work with “and” and “but”. I was thinking how I’d write that expression in C (j && !eng) and it’s cool to see you guys take it one step further with the “but”.
YES! Oh, precious substrings! Thank you thank you thank you! (And yes, that was in the readme… I missed it somehow bangs head on wall)
Just got done weeding 8k files out of a folder of 30k. Would’ve taken me hours to do what EasyFind did in less than a minute.
It is sooooo nice to be able to do boolean “Find File” searches. Thank you soooo much for providing a way to get around Tiger’s lack of boolean searching! (OMG thank you!)
I had a small problem - I wanted to get rid of three files types that I had in folders. The files ended in txt or exe or nfo. By typing .txt or .exe or .nfo I can find these files by using just the one set of four characters.
I then thought that I should be able to find all of the three types of files by using ‘OR’ operator.
I have tried several iterations but none of what I thought of have worked.
Here is two examples that didn’t work.
.txt OR .exe OR .nfo
*.txt OR -.exe OR -.nfo
Can anyone comes up with the right syntax for the proper use of the boolean OR operator please?
