What is the syntax of Windows 7 file search (wildcards, logical signs...) ?__

Anonymous
2009-11-16T14:40:26+00:00

Hello,

I am looking for it everywhere but I can't find it.

When in Windows search and you are looking for a file, you can type in *.txt to look for a '.txt' file.

But it seems that the syntax of file name to look seems more complex that it looks first.

For instance, the quote character (") and the equal sign (=) seem to have there own significance.

And I think I have heard that it was possible to use 'not' and 'and ' signs.

Please, where can I find the complete syntax of the search paterns?

Thank you a lot

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Files, folders, and storage

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  1. Anonymous
    2013-01-23T21:53:36+00:00

    One caveat with using the Windows search, you can use the keywords AND, OR, and NOT to search for specific combinations, but these keywords must be all uppercase.

    If you search for "cat and dog" it will return results containing the word cat, the word and, and the word dog.

    If you search for "cat AND dog" it will return result containing the word cat and the word dog.

    Exercise for the reader:

    Search for files containing the word "AND but not the word "OR"

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  2. Anonymous
    2013-01-23T21:43:44+00:00

    Riiiight... grep is so much easier to use than just typing some stuff in a box.

    If you're comparing it to "just typing some stuff in a box" that covers pretty much every dialog box and command line interface ever, so it's a meaningless comparison.

    The problem is this Windows search uses a gui interface, but requires you to learn a command line syntax, and doesn't provide an obvious way to LEARN that syntax, thus  providing the worst features of both approaches.

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  3. Anonymous
    2012-12-15T01:53:55+00:00

    I agree completely.  Thanks.

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  4. Anonymous
    2012-12-15T00:25:44+00:00

    Noel, you misunderstood me. Yes, it's useful to search for files with particular properties (as long as the default is the file name), but what I was complaining about is having a search engine that searches the contents of the file (e.g. the text in a Word file), not file name or other properties of the file. Searching for file properties and searching inside a file are (or should be) two quite different functions.

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