How do I use wholefilename: ?

[Pod]

I have the latest version of everything.

If I type

hosts

into the search bar I get a lot of results (134), but I'm after a file exactly named "hosts" (e.g. C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts), so I want to filter this down a bit to save myself some mental effort.

So I try

wholefilename: hosts

. This results in a blank search result.

wfn: hosts

gives the same result.

If I type

wholeword: hosts

I get 134 results again.

However, if I type

hosts

and press CLTR+B to enable WHOLE WORD mode I get 24 objects, which behaves the way I'd expect

wholefilename:

to work.

1. How come ww: and CTRL+B differ, given that they both claim to be "whole word" ?
2. How come wholefilename isn't matching my "hosts" file for a search of "hosts"? Infact, "wholefilename: " always seems to return 0 no matter what I type.

Thanks,

[void]

Some notes:

Please make sure there is no space after a search modifier, for example, to search for hosts using wholewords, search for:
wholeword:hosts

wholefilename: followed by a space will try to match files with no filename, please try without the space, for example:
wholefilename:hosts

Also, if you have match path enabled from the Search menu, wholefilename will match the full path and filename. You could override this with:
nopath:wholefilename:hosts

1. How come ww: and CTRL+B differ, given that they both claim to be "whole word" ?

It looks like you are searching for:
wholeword:<space>hosts

which Everything interprets as:
wholeword: AND hosts

The wholeword: with a space after it will match every single file.

2. How come wholefilename isn't matching my "hosts" file for a search of "hosts"? Infact, "wholefilename: " always seems to return 0 no matter what I type.

Please try searching for (without any spaces):
wholefilename:hosts

And make sure Match Path is disabled from the search menu, or please try searching for:
nopath:wholefilename:hosts

[Pod]

Thanks for the reply

I can't believe the solution was so simple! I had misunderstood the search syntax, I had thought they were merely "flags" that could occur anywhere in the search bar and they would apply the entire search, but it seems like they're specific operations with specific operands that follow directly after the ':'.

This also might explain why some of my other uses of the search modifiers never resulted in "ideal" results