I dont get "Everything" :-S

[MaartenG]

A couple of days ago I started testing Everything. (basically: poking it with a stick and see how it would respond)
It is highly configurable, the speed is amazing and it can be driven and configured from the command-line. Rather impressive all in all.

But beside these technicalities, I couldn't understand the actual use for it, other than using it as a NCD alternative (like: CD m32 brings you to the systeM32 foledr)

Does anyone care to share how they use Everything to make their day-to-day computerlife a little more comfortable?

 

[MaartenG]

Ok, you can make Everything to find duplicates of files. That is useful.

Extend the default index options, so you can find duplicates where name and size are the same:

Now you can search for: dupe: sizedupe: file: !\windows\ to find duplicates and ignore any \Windows\ folder.
(This query can be build through the Advanced Search... menu option )

I made it into a filter to make it easy accessible (Menu > Search > Duplicates )

 

[mikea]

I use Everything in a script (FindGoto.btm) that enables me to search one or more drive(s) for files matching a particular filespec, then "pushd" to that location. Much faster than manual searches. It's most useful when there are several similarly named files and I need to find a specific one whose exact name I've forgotten. Say I want to search for a digital photo whose name contains "0315".

findgoto d:*0315*.jpg

If I don't remember the drive:

findgoto *0315*.jpg

The script displays each location of matching files and gives me a choice of finding the next occurrence or going to the just-found location.

 

[MaartenG]

That is a clever idea! Don't know (yet) if I'm going to use it very often (do you?), but I really like the idea. Thanks for sharing!

I tried to emulate your script with this:

alias CDF=`everything /F *%1$* |! (set _CDF=%@path[%@select[con,1,1,20,100, Change directory to file location]] & if defined _CDF CDD "%_CDF" & unset _CDF)`

It looks a little like the CDD interface (*) and it works almost as yours (although I had to use d:\*0315.jpg instead of d:*0315.jpg but I can live with that.

P.S. The ** around %1$ will probably prevent you from doing advanced queries (in that case: just leave them out), but it makes "normal" searches easier: CDF 0315 or CDF 0315*.jpg

(*) Hence the chosen name: CD-D=directory; CD-F=files; I have to keep my aliases apart somehow (all 10 of them ;-)

 

[mikea]

That's cool. I like how the script displays the information, but your CDF alias is much faster (for one thing, the script checks to ensure that the Everything service is running. Once in a while, for some reason it doesn't run following a reboot...and the script does a few other things that make it slower). That's a useful alias, thanks. Interestingly, though the JPS docs say that using a "|!" sort of pipe will likely be a bit slower than using "|" alone, I tried it both ways and the commands run a bit faster with "|!".

I could probably speed up the script a bit if I could find the old 'fgrep' program I once used (seems to me it was faster than 'findstr') and the old 'uniq' tool I also used some years ago. Those would eliminate a couple of steps. But the CDF alias would probably still be quicker.

 

[MaartenG]

Once in a while, for some reason it doesn't run following a reboot...

Are you sure it is the service and not the client (the orange magnifier glass in the notification area / system tray)?

On my system I added a delay for loading the database (to dodge the boot-time "rush hour") by starting the client with parameters -startup -load-delay 20000 (=20 seconds) from the Run-key in the registry.
In my case the client is started from HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. In your case that would be HKLM instead of HKCU.

If it is indeed the service itself, you could configure in the Recovery tab of services.msc that Everything has to restart itself (up to 3 times)
Or do so with a command:
sc failure Everything reset= 86400 actions= restart/5000/restart/5000/restart/5000
(86400 = #seconds = 1 day reset fail count ; 5000 = #millisec delay between action)
Note: Assuming the servicename is Everything....

a "|!" sort of pipe will likely be a bit slower

In this case it even requires a |! If not, it would start a new shell (different %_PID) , change the directory in that one and then end this shell to return to the "original" shell, where the directoory still would be the same.

 

[MaartenG]

Well, this Everything.exe might be useful after all ....

• Search for file: c: and sort on Size and you get the biggest files on disk C: (works also with a mapped drive: or even this: file: \\ for UNC paths
• If you also index on folder size, you could do this for folders, too: folder: c:
  
• To get empty folders, search for: empty: (warning: includes inaccessible folders)
• Find potential nasty characters in filenames (search for: & for example)

 

[vefatica]

Heva you read this? [http://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/searching/] Most of it works from the (internal) EVERYTHING command line. There is also a command line utility available from Everything (includes source). I made a plugin to emulate that utility, but it doesn't do much more than can already be done by two other mechanisms.

 

[MaartenG]

Heva you read this? [http://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/searching/] Most of it works from the (internal) EVERYTHING command line. There is also a command line utility available from Everything (includes source). I made a plugin to emulate that utility, but it doesn't do much more than can already be done by two other mechanisms.

The documentation on their site is very good and organized. Read most of it (I think).
I already tried the ES.exe command-line tool, but had trouble displaying anything else beside the FQDN (no size, no date and no run-count .... :-(

Do you have an example of an EVERYTHING (TCC edition) commandline option that works? I guess I'm trying the wrong ones. (Not a search option, but a display option)

 

[vefatica]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Not a search option, but a display option".

 

[MaartenG]

I'm not sure what you mean by "Not a search option, but a display option".

And after re-reading: neither am I :-)

Let me decrypt:
Everything has command-line options to specify what to search for / how to sort the results / what to display (which information about the found files/folders).
EVERYTHING supports at least some of of the Everything search options, but none of the sort or display options (after limited testing).

I wondered if you got one of the sort or display options working.

Does that make "Everything" (*) a little clearer?

(*) I can picture the guy (it has to be a guy ..) that came up with this "Everything" name laughing out loud when he sees discussions like this. I bet he legally changed his name to "Anyone" to confuse things further .....

 

[vefatica]

Are you talking about the latest ES.EXE from void tools? At least two (-sort name, and -sort size) works for me. The latest one has much more capability than older ones. These require Everything 1.4 which in only in beta now, and (probably) wasn't available at all when the EVERYTHING command was written (likewise for my own command line version and my plugin version). Though TCC boasts of a new version of Everything, I doubt it's a beta version. Maybe we'll see these enhancements in a later TCC.

 

[MaartenG]

I was talking about TCC's internal command EVERYTHING, as you said:

Most of it works from the (internal) EVERYTHING command line.

But I could only get the "search" options working, not the "sort" or "display" options. That's why I asked for an example.

What does work:

Everything.EXE:
Everything.EXE -newwindow -sort "run count" -s tcmd (to search for TCMD; most opened sorted first)
Everything.EXE -sort "size" -sort-descending -search c: ( to view the biggest files, sorted by size)

ES.EXE:
ES.EXE -size -name -path-column -sort size -sort-descending -maxresults 30 -export-csv BigFiles30.csv
(to export the 30 largest files to a CSV, reported as size;filename;path )

 

[vefatica]

I don't know about the Everything included with TCMD v20. It may not be the beta. Those options are not part of the search_string; I doubt they can be used in the Everything dialog. They are "true" options" that set parameters by which the search will be conducted and the results shown. I wouldn't expect them to work with the built-in EVERYTHING until Rex builds them into the command. I haven't got it all figured out yet.

 

[MaartenG]

I didn't really expect them to be working, tbh, but would be nice.
And you are right: it requires a newer version of Everything than the one provided with TCMD20 to make some of these things to work (especially true for the ES.exe utility).
I think it's the right decision to make EVERYTHING (the internal command) a selected subset of all the infinite Everything possibilities. Keep it simple. If you want more, use Everything.exe or ES.exe.
@JohnQSmith had a good suggestion to use the run-count for sorting the CDD selectbox. After all this research my conclusion is that it is indeed a suggestion; it is not possible with the current techniques.

I think I'm going to focus on something else; this is all too confusing for me :-)