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Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything?

From nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups comp.sys.mac.system, comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything?
Date 2021-05-06 18:41 -0400
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <060520211841190470%nospam@nospam.invalid> (permalink)
References <OcydnQDfx-vMywn9nZ2dnUU7-SfNnZ2d@earthlink.com> <060520211746433917%nospam@nospam.invalid> <s71o6c$4nv$3@dont-email.me> <060520211806506328%nospam@nospam.invalid> <s71pcr$fb3$1@dont-email.me>

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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In article <s71pcr$fb3$1@dont-email.me>, Alan Baker
<notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> wrote:

> >>>> I was searching "culture" (without quotation marks) for Office 365
> >>>> v16.48's Office filenames, but macOS Big Sur v11.3.1's Finder and
> >>>> Spotlight doesn't find them in a 13" 2012 Intel MacBook Pro's SSD. It
> >>>> doesn't show all of the files that I see when manually listing them in
> >>>> Finder's Documents.
> >>>
> >>> totally normal. spotlight is not great at finding stuff.
> >>
> >> Actually, Spotlight is EXCELLENT at finding stuff.
> > 
> > actually it's not.
> > 
> > for example, it fails miserably with partial matches.
> 
> Give an example...

consider a bunch of documents and/or folders of medical specialties,
such as toxicology, cardiology, physiology, anesthesiology, oncology,
dermatology, radiology, neurology, and ophthalmology.

you want to find all of them, so you search for common letters, in this
case, 'ology'. 

since the query does not begin on a word boundary, the search results
will not be particularly helpful, as in none.

on the other hand, if the search query started on a word boundary,
e.g., 'cardio', then it will find cardiology but not any of the others.
you'd have to do multiple searches for each one, hopefully not
forgetting any of them.

> > it doesn't search
> > everywhere. 
> 
> It does... ...if you ask it to.

not where it hasn't indexed.

> > the index can silently corrupt.
> 
> Anything can.

true, except that spotlight relies on an index, and if it's corrupted,
it's not going to work particularly well.

the real problem is that spotlight doesn't tell you that the index is
corrupt, so you'll never know why the results aren't what you might
expect. btdt.

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Thread

macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? ant@zimage.comREMOVETHIS1ST (Ant) - 2021-05-06 15:49 -0500
  Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2021-05-06 17:46 -0400
    Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> - 2021-05-06 14:47 -0700
      Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2021-05-06 18:06 -0400
        Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> - 2021-05-06 15:08 -0700
          Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2021-05-06 18:41 -0400
            Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> - 2021-05-06 15:57 -0700
              Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2021-05-07 20:33 -0400
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> - 2021-05-07 19:47 -0700
            Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> - 2021-05-07 18:41 +0000
              Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2021-05-07 20:33 -0400
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> - 2021-05-08 02:33 +0000
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> - 2021-05-07 19:48 -0700
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> - 2021-05-08 09:53 +0000
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> - 2021-05-08 23:24 +0000
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2021-05-08 13:39 -0400
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> - 2021-05-08 17:50 +0000
                Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> - 2021-05-08 12:28 -0700
        Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> - 2021-05-07 18:31 +0000
      Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Snit <brock.mcnuggets@gmail.com> - 2021-05-07 04:19 +0000
  Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Snit <Brock.McNuggets@gmail.com> - 2021-05-07 00:49 +0000
  Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? ant@zimage.comANT (Ant) - 2021-05-06 20:30 -0500

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