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Digging in the Archives: Finder and HFinder!

Last updated on 11 years ago
rebraistrebraistJunior Member
Posted 11 years ago
Let's talk about searching!
Surely you all have tried to find something you don't remember where it is!
And when you're thinking that cursing the entire universe because of this is a good thing (and you're sure that if you'd not looking for it, it would be in front of your eyes) let's suppose that you were searching a file.
First times I used Aros after ten years of non amiga using, well, I've to admit it wasn't that easy to remember where things were.

Then i discovered two little progs in the archives that let you search files, directories and even those little red and white socks you... forgive me! BLACK and WHITE socks. A serious man should never wear red and white socks!
Ok! Let's go!

A little introduction for non amigans: Amiga uses, like many Oses, wildcards (or jolly chars). You can find a complete description of them in any of the websites about Amiga Dos but just say that #? is equal to * (? substitutes a single character. I.E. A? is equal to AA, AB, AC but not ABC. If I want to substitute more than a single character I use #? because # stands for "any number of", so #? is "any number of character". We can say that foo*.* can be written as foo#?.#?. Ok?
Now go to the programs!

Finder and HFinder, both let you search for file, but let's look them in a deeper way!
1) FINDER V3.1
Written by Chris Jones and ported to Aros by Mattias Rustler, Finder lets you, in a few clicks, search for files.
Choose the drawer (or disk) you want to search in, then enter filename (or the pattern to search for it), click find and you're done. You can choose to choose for case sensitive and recursive options. The latter is needed to search in nested drawers. If finder finds what you want, loads a list with all files found. Then lets you save or print the list.

2) HFINDER
Written by Fabio Falcucci with Hollywood language (you'll immediately notice this by the more polished look), has a bit different approach. It gives you a prewritten wildcard and path (this makes your life easier). Then you can change the default path or file name. Finally you click on search and you'll find what you're looking for.

Hfinder, as Finder3.1 has a recursive search option, but it acts as a little file manager letting you select, copy, move and delete multiple files. Hfinder has a prefences window too, where you can change the language and decide to remember last path or pattern.

What to choose?
Let's say both of them don't look for "drawers". If you're looking for a drawer, nor finder nor hfinder, will give you it as a result.
Don't expect it'd act as the windows search tool: you cant' double click a file and launch it.

But both of them have good arrows: finder lets you save the list to look for it later and search only for case sensitive matches, hfinder hasn't save or case sensitive options, but lets you copy, move or delete files.

Both easy and fast, both use wildcards. What to choose I ask again? In a basic way they're equivalent. If you want something more complete (but not complex) you'd go for hfinder, if you need to save your results, well the choice is finder 3.1.

Both Finder and HFinder come with Icaros, but you can find them in the archives.
M
magoriumSoftware Dev
Posted 11 years ago
Thank you for the extensive information Rebraist,

tbh, i always use Dopus' hunt and search command as i am not a wizard in shell myself. But those two utilities are indeed very nice to use.

Now... is there a utility that can search for that single tiny tool that i can't find _and_ of which i can't remember it's name ? ;)
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