CSearcher - customizable, non-indexing local search

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hugonabais
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Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:00 am

Re: CSearcher

#46 Post by hugonabais »

I released a new version of CSearcher

Version 1.4.3.0
[new] Completely redesigned MD5 code. Calculating MD5 is now slightly faster (aound 10-20%).
[new] While calculating MD5, there is now a form with progress details and an option to cancel. Avoided "not responding" on main form
[new] The path of result files is shown as a 'tooltip' over the file name. This can be disabled in menu "View->No Results Name tooltip"
[new] New scrollable form to inform about new versions.

Downloads:
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .4.3.0.zip Compressed archive.
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .4.3.0.exe Self-Extracting file.

Screens:
Image

Mouse over a file:
Image

As always any comments or suggestions are welcome.
Hugo

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webfork
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Re: CSearcher

#47 Post by webfork »

I don't want to diminish the work you've done under the hood with tweaks to speed up MD5 and live results. Those are certainly more important than what I'm about to say. I just happen to be someone that works with interfaces a lot so I spent most of my time there.


Interface notes

1. Some nice changes. I like what you did for MD5 hash generation and the arrow buttons to collapse the program view.

2. I tried to come up with something in terms of a mockup for the filter view (grayscale filters) but I'm concerned it won't be obvious for colorblind folks. So I added a "+" symbol next to it. I've got both showing in the screenshot just for contrast.
  • Image
(I built this mockup using Pencil and some simple screenshot tricks from Greenshot.)

3. As shown above, I think you can switch "restrictions" to "filter" as that word takes up less space and means basically the same thing. I also switched "file content" to just "content". That might be more confusing so feel free to discard.

4. If you were planning on taking this in a commercial direction at some point, please let us know. I wouldn't blame you but some indicator would be helpful.

---
If you check Containing Text it will search for anything that contains "day", for example it could return results like "today.txt", "myday3.mp3", etc.
Hope I could explain myself, if you have a better suggestion please tell me.
I do understand, but I was initially confused by it. I thought it referred to the "File Content Restrictions" tab. Usually the way other interfaces I've seen cover this is relying on the user to put wildcards around any word they enter (e.g. test* would return "testing" and *test would return "contest" ... *test* would return both).


Other filters

I don't know if this is useful but in trying to come up with other filters, I thought of a content filter that uses "All the words" vs. "Any of the words". For example, the "all" setting would return "cat" and "house" gives both cathouse and housecat. Meanwhile the "Any" setting would return everything with either cat or house in the title. I believe this is just a natural language way of using boolean logic.

hugonabais
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:00 am

Re: CSearcher

#48 Post by hugonabais »

Hi webfork,

Thank you for your great input.

I like your restriction icons ideias. I really need to change those icons and I like your grey icon ideia for disable, and the yellow one with the red plus sign for enable! I will work on it.

I do not want to change restriction to filter because for me there are two different concepts. Restrictions and filters. Restrictions are something that will be applied while searching files restricting the results obtained, and filters are something dynamic for filtering the end results displaying/hiding results.

About a comercial direction I really don't know. If I make a comercial version I will always keep a parallel free version.
The only reason that I might go in a comercial direction is because I still have lots of features I would like to add and some of them are very hard/time consuming to make without any compensation. As everyone else I need to put food on the table for my family so I'm having to focus on projects and work that allow me to do that.
Nonetheless, I think I can keep improving, upgrading and fixing CSearcher "free".
I do understand, but I was initially confused by it. I thought it referred to the "File Content Restrictions" tab. Usually the way other interfaces I've seen cover this is relying on the user to put wildcards around any word they enter (e.g. test* would return "testing" and *test would return "contest" ... *test* would return both).
If you unselect "Containing Text" you can use wildcards day*.jpg, day*.j??. And before "Containing Text" checkbox you had to type *day* and people complained about this. And I created the "Containing Text" checkbox.


This is my To do/new ideias (raw) list:
Refresh button, refresh selected results
Allow Regex expressions
Ability to exclude sub folders names from search
/autoexportcsv:<filename> /autoexportxml:<filename> runs csearcher from command line, searches defined folders, exports to file and closes.
Change RTF file to PDF or DOC file.

Long term or PRO version (hard/time consuming)
If searching folder is on a NTFS disk read file table and parse it for faster results
Multiple searchers threads and allowing multi search
New similar Treesize results form with filter
Rename file form, pattern rename
Internal Copy to folder/Move to folder
Add or append to zip
More command line options
Native windows context menu option
Charts by Date, extensions, size,
Compare two search exports (informs about new files, what files have changed)
Advanced find duplicate files, grouping them and creating new form with duplicates

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webfork
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Re: CSearcher

#49 Post by webfork »

hugonabais wrote:Thank you for your great input.
Glad that was helpful :)
hugonabais wrote:I need to put food on the table for my family so I'm having to focus on projects and work that allow me to do that.
We do understand that developers have to eat and giving away freeware doesn't pay the bills. I can try recommending a few tracks as that comes closer, I just wanted to verify that you had some kind of plan around an ongoing free version, otherwise we might want to take this a different route.
hugonabais wrote:And before "Containing Text" checkbox you had to type *day* and people complained about this.
It's hard to make everyone happy. This might be a place where you maybe build some documentation or some kind of intro guide to explain it. I can help with that as well.
hugonabais wrote:This is my To do/new ideas (raw) list
Looks good. You might want to setup a webpage and have that posted somewhere.
hugonabais wrote:Long term or PRO version (hard/time consuming)
Also a good list. A few of those sound very interesting.

hugonabais
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:00 am

Re: CSearcher

#50 Post by hugonabais »

I released a new version of CSearcher with a new cleaner layout, lots of tooltips to provide some usage help and regular expression support! (also some bug fixed)

Version 1.5.0.0 (March 9, 2017)
[new] Most controls have now tooltips to provide functional help
[alt] Content restriction has options to search inside files for containing string with case sensitive or insensitive text
[alt] Mainform layout changes and small fixes
[alt] Introduction of search mode, which replaces the old "containing text" with new simple mode and exact modes
[new] Introduction of Regex mode that allows for regular expression searches and exclusions
[new] New Pattern restrictions tab, with a new ability to exclude subfolders from searches
[alt] Name exclusions moved to new Pattern restrictions tab
[fix] Fixed a small layout problem in Delete permanently form
[fix] Fixed a bug while permanently deleting objects. Objects with unicode characters were not deleted
[fix] Fixed some bugs on MD5 time remaining calculation. The current file name is now displayed in MD5 form while calculating hash

Downloads:
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.0.0.zip Compressed archive.
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.0.0.exe Self-Extracting file.

Screens:
Image

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webfork
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Re: CSearcher

#51 Post by webfork »

I released a new version of CSearcher with a new cleaner layout, lots of tooltips to provide some usage help and regular expression support! (also some bug fixed)
This looks amazing. I look forward to testing this over the coming week. Thanks for taking some of my suggestions.

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smaragdus
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Re: CSearcher

#52 Post by smaragdus »

@hugonabais
I follow CSearcher from the very first release and for less than 3 months program has evolved a lot! Thank you for your excellent work!

hugonabais
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:00 am

Re: CSearcher

#53 Post by hugonabais »

Thank you for the kind words. I also think CSearcher has evolved a lot.
Much is due to your contribution.
I still have a lot of things I would like to improve and features I want to add.
Unfortunately, more the complexity increases and the time required to continue to develop is greater, this when I have less available time.
But whenever I have a little time, I want to try to continue developing CSearcher.

hugonabais
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:00 am

Re: CSearcher

#54 Post by hugonabais »

CSearcher has had some relative success, I've had thousands of downloads on my site and until today I only received one donation. It was something I expected but it is still a bit of a disencouraging and leaves me with little motivation to continue to evolve into more complex features.
I need to find this motivation (and some free time) to be able to implement these features.

Despite this I made another version :D

Version 1.5.1.0 (May 8, 2017)
[new] New option (menu Option) to limit Max number of results
[new] New option (menu Option) to Keep results on new search
[new] New option (menu Edit or shortcut key Alt+F) that copies to clipboard the folder of selected results
[fix] Fixed a couple of bugs in keyboard shortcuts
[fix] Fixed small layout bugs on main form

Downloads:
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.1.0.zip Compressed archive.
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.1.0.exe Self-Extracting file.

hugonabais
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:00 am

Re: CSearcher

#55 Post by hugonabais »

CSearcher 1.5.1.0 had a bug and I fixed it in a new version:

Version 1.5.1.1 (May 8, 2017)
[fix] Fixed bug that displayed error message on startup

Downloads:
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.1.1.zip Compressed archive.
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.1.1.exe Self-Extracting file.

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SYSTEM
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Re: CSearcher

#56 Post by SYSTEM »

hugonabais wrote:CSearcher 1.5.1.0 had a bug and I fixed it in a new version:

Version 1.5.1.1 (May 8, 2017)
[fix] Fixed bug that displayed error message on startup
Thanks for the fix. I updated the database entry. :) (Billon had updated it to 1.5.1.0.)
My YouTube channel | Release date of my 13th playlist: August 24, 2020

hugonabais
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Re: CSearcher

#57 Post by hugonabais »

I like to use regular expressions in general, and also with CSearcher, but I've always found hard to remember the Regex Syntax.
To fix this I've create a new small form :D
Now when you select Regex mode and press the add button you have a nice form explaining regular expressions and a built in tester :)
Image

Also I've also added a requested feature:
Image


And fixed some bugs!

As always any suggestions or comments are welcome.

Here it is:
Version 1.5.2.0 (May 16, 2017)
[new] New form when adding regex patterns. It has detailed explanation of Regex patters and a Regex expression tester.
[new] New option (menu Option) to limit Max depth of subfolder search
[fix] Fixed bug when always on top was checked, other dialog forms were not always on top and could not be accessed
[fix] Fixed bug on add patterns form when adding empty patterns
[fix] Fixed warning display bug sometimes showing while searching

Downloads:
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.2.0.zip Compressed archive.
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.2.0.exe Self-Extracting file.

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Midas
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Re: CSearcher

#58 Post by Midas »

Great job! I'm particularly impressed with the new small form reminder for regex syntax. It's a bonanza for balloon heads like me. Thanks. :mrgreen:

hugonabais
Posts: 63
Joined: Sat Dec 24, 2016 6:00 am

Re: CSearcher

#59 Post by hugonabais »

New version with small new features and fixed some bugs!

As always any suggestions or comments are welcome.

Here it is:
Version 1.5.3.0 (June 6, 2017)
[fix] Fixed bug when CSearcher was last opened on a removed secondary screen, it didn't display main form (was on an invalid area)
[new] New function (menu Edit) that allows to remove selected item(s) from results
[new] New function (menu Help) that allows to open the folder where CSearcher is running from (useful for manual updates)
[fix] Added protection notification when trying to open several notepad or HexViewer results
[alt] Small layout tweaks

Downloads:
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.3.0.zip Compressed archive.
·http://www.hnsoft.pt/Repository/CSearch ... .5.3.0.exe Self-Extracting file.

xor
Posts: 106
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:02 pm

Re: CSearcher

#60 Post by xor »

I lost of sight a folder and CSearcher found it real fast, I normally use Everything in this cases but I am sometimes a bit annoyed of having to index a huge amount of data just to accomplish a simple task, btw I also tried SearchMyFiles but, oh well, I was searching for a folder and not a file, thus It didn't find it. Cool App!

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