Exclude Results

Have a suggestion for "Everything"? Please post it here.
Post Reply
bxf
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2017 12:10 am

Exclude Results

Post by bxf »

I've read the thread "Omit results", and it appears to me to have gotten out of hand, so I will try to simplify the request.

Imagine that you are trying to locate a file whose name you cannot recall. However, you are pretty sure that it would have the word "management" in the name. You do a search using this word, and you get over a thousand hits. There is no immediate obvious word you can add to the search to reduce the number of hits, so you go through the list, eyeballing every entry till you find what you need.

Different people work using various techniques. Personally, I like to exclude from the list items that I can dismiss as not being relevant to my search. This reduces the amount of data I am confronted with and makes my search easier. Sometimes one can sort the search results by path and exclude an entire large block from the search results, again, thus reducing the amount of data I have to eyeball.

Everything is not my program, so I cannot know how easily the following suggestion would fit into existing code, but this comes to mind: Add an invisible flag byte to each line in the search results, and flag each line that is selected for exclusion. The flag can then be inspected while building the search results list. A Reset Excluded command would be used to restore all excluded lines.

Thanks for a great program, BTW.
froggie
Posts: 303
Joined: Wed Jun 12, 2013 10:43 pm

Re: Exclude Results

Post by froggie »

Nice idea.

There was a music file management program that I used to use that had a right-click "exclude from current view" option. I used it a lot.
Janus
Posts: 84
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2016 7:33 pm

Re: Exclude Results

Post by Janus »

A simple addition to achieve this might be a minus symbol.
Do a search for 'Robin'
Then add a '-williams' which would leave 'loxley' and the rest. {Sorry, binging on OUaT and he just showed up so the name stuck.}

It should not be hard to support multiple exclusions, including perhaps path exclusions as well.
'-"C:\Temp\:"' to exclude a temp directory.

I believe the results are a linked list of strings, so 'if contains/match then drop' should be just another operation before display.


Janus.
Stamimail
Posts: 1122
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2013 9:05 pm

Re: Exclude Results

Post by Stamimail »

@bxf
Like your example.
@Janus
See another example (visual items) in "Omit results" thread

For who searched for such a solution under the name "Exclude Results" this is what we have for now. (a workaround)
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4989#p19254
bxf
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 13, 2017 12:10 am

Re: Exclude Results

Post by bxf »

@Janus

I did say There is no immediate obvious word you can add to the search to reduce the number of hits...

Go ahead, try a search on "management" and then imagine you have to identify one particular file, and then see how many exclusions you'd have to specify to reduce the number of search results to a manageable quantity:)
Janus
Posts: 84
Joined: Mon Nov 07, 2016 7:33 pm

Re: Exclude Results

Post by Janus »

@ bxf

You can believe that I understand.
I use everything to index the projects and my reference materials on my lan.

At 11.7 million files, even everything lags a little, and eats memory.
I am so looking forward to indirect indexing that has been hinted at for 1.5
To be able to tell everything to ask other machines in your workgroup for files that are shared.

Try typing in main.cpp and getting 6K+ results.
Now, which one was I after again.
That excludes the files where that is the end of the filename, if I include them, it gets messy.
Example code is not fun to keep straight, but better than not having it.

Learning about the ! for exclusion has helped, but I hold out hope for the minus sign.

Still, I would not want to lose this program, that would be horrid.


Janus.
void
Developer
Posts: 17159
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Exclude Results

Post by void »

similar discussion here, I hope to add a temporary exclude list in Everything 1.5. This could be expanded to a "important flag" like with emails.

One way to do this now, is copy the files to the clipboard and paste them in the search edit, it will paste a long filelist:"file1|file2|file3|..."
If you place a ! in front of this list it will exclude it, for example: !filelist:"file1|file2|file3|..."

Note: filelist: terms can be really long, Everything will stop displaying text in the search edit when the search text is longer than 8000 characters.
Stamimail
Posts: 1122
Joined: Sat Aug 31, 2013 9:05 pm

Re: Exclude Results

Post by Stamimail »

void wrote:One way to do this now, is copy the files to the clipboard and paste them in the search edit, it will paste a long filelist:"file1|file2|file3|..."
If you place a ! in front of this list it will exclude it, for example: !filelist:"file1|file2|file3|..."
and paste them in the search edit at the end of the current search ...
Note: filelist: terms can be really long, Everything will stop displaying text in the search edit when the search text is longer than 8000 characters.
It will work but the display issue is a limitation within Windows.
therube
Posts: 5060
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: Exclude Results

Post by therube »

Janus wrote:A simple addition to achieve this might be a minus symbol.

Do a search for 'Robin'
Then add a '-williams' which would leave 'loxley' and the rest.
That exists already, except is NOT the - symbol but rather the NOT (negate) ! symbol.

> Robin !williams

Finds: Robin loxley (but not Robin williams)

---

Image

Not quite sure what is being proposed here, anyhow...

1. Crystal
2. only look on C:
3. exclude files/directories starting with \cr

Granted, not 1000's or 10s of 1000's of files...

262 items -> 56 items -> 30 items, manageable & gives me what I need.
And the sort by Path.

---

I see from history, I've used in the past something like this:

!video: !audio: !pic !zip: !doc: !exe: !folder: !.iso

to filter, not sure what. Anyhow.
Post Reply