Using "everything"

[epement]

I would like to see a more particular explanation of how Everything (the voidtools utility) ought to be used in conjunction with Take Command. I have already looked at the help file, and it doesn't answer what I'm seeking. I want to know more particularly the pros and cons of different installation types (e.g., why or when to install as administrator?), what to index (or not), and how an expert should use it.

Interestingly, I cannot search for the word "everything" in the forum I am reading now (supposedly, this word is too common to index). Please illustrate with some real examples of actual use. Thanks.

Eric

 

[vefatica]

As I understand it there two ways to use everything for searching.

1. With the Everything service running ... the only purpose of the service is to let a "service client", which maintains the indexes or chosen NTFS drives, run without a UAC prompt. This is the set-up recommended by Voidtools. It also has the advantage of letting unelevated apps (TCC/TCMD, typically) communicate with the "service client" for purposes other than searches (for example, the command EVERYTHING /O). Unfortunately, when the TCMD installer installs and starts the service, it also starts another instance **elevated**. This is OK for searching but not for some other kinds of communication. If you install the service, I'd recommend killing the non-service instance afetr TCMD install and starting a "service client" unelevated. That will not require a UAC prompt (if the service is running). The command for starting the "service client" is

<path_to>everything.exe -startup

You can stop the "service client" with

<path_to>everything.exe -quit

I start the "service client" in a logon script and leave it alone thereafter.

2. Without the Everything service running ... then everything.exe must be run elevated. Without the service, you'll get a UAC prompt when trying to start everything.exe. This works for searching but not, as mentioned before, for other types of communication.

As for searching itself, Everything Search is very powerful and the search language is well beyond the scope of TCMD's help. See
http://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/searching/
I have got all the search strings I've tried to work with the EVERYTHING command (though it sometimes requires a bit of struggling with quoting and escaping).

 

[Alpengreis]

Unfortunately, when the TCMD installer installs and starts the service, it also starts another instance **elevated**.

Here NOT, I have ONE instance: this for the service and that's it ...

Greetings!

 

[vefatica]

Here NOT, I have ONE instance: this for the service and that's it ...

View attachment 843

Greetings!

It had been doing that. Maybe Rex changed the behavior. If you have only the service running then I wouldn't expect searches to work.

 

[Alpengreis]

It had been doing that. Maybe Rex changed the behavior. If you have only the service running then I wouldn't expect searches to work.

Yes, that's right. I must start explicit the everything first, for example with "EVERYTHING /E" ...

It's problably because this ...

I don't know, if this was the original preference or not.

 

[vefatica]

I haven't tried that one and I wonder how it works. Does it start before anyone logs on? ... as who? Voidtools says:

Start Everything on system startup

Start Everything when Windows starts. When Everything starts from Windows startup, the tray icon is shown and the database is loaded and updated, no Everything search window is shown.

 

[Alpengreis]

I haven't tried that one and I wonder how it works. Does it start before anyone logs on? ... as who?

I have not used this option till now - but I will test it (later today, I hope). However: at least here, the options are in a own directory within "...User\AppData\Roaming\Everything" - probably it starts after login as actual user.

 

[Alpengreis]

Okay, I have tested.

Immediately after I ticked this option, the Admin Access is required ...

... to create this run key in registry ...

Then it starts after login as actual user ...

For me, this is okay and useful in this way.

 

[vefatica]

Thanks for testing. That makes sense.

 

[epement]

Thanks to those who are beginning the discussion. Let me be more direct in what I mean by "real examples."

In Cygwin and GNU/Linux, I can do something like this:

locate --null --regex "^filepattern" | xargs --null command -options

and a set of files will be passed, one at a time, to xargs, which passes them to the "command" to handle, with appropriate options. The --null switch allows the filenames to contain embedded spaces, so that when xargs gets a filename or pathname with embedded spaces, it doesn't split the string at the space characters. If I want, I can do a lot more things with xargs, but I hope you get the idea.

I can see that everything has a /r(egex) option, as well as options to return only /f(iles) or /d(irectories), and that it returns one item per line. However, suppose I wanted to pipe the result set to another command, and in an xarg-ish way I didn't want to worry about having "c:\My Web Sites\Foo Bar\file.png" being split into 4 tokens. I know how to handle this in Cygwin. How would I handle this in Take Command?

What commands are analogous to xargs in Take Command? Thanks in advance.

 

[vefatica]

It's not a pipe, but it works well.

DO line in /p everything <opts> "search_spec" ( ... refer to "%line" here in case it has special characters )