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

From	Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no>
Newsgroups	comp.sys.mac.system, comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject	Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything?
Date	2021-05-07 19:47 -0700
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<s74u4e$she$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	(3 earlier) <060520211806506328%nospam@nospam.invalid> <s71pcr$fb3$1@dont-email.me> <060520211841190470%nospam@nospam.invalid> <s71s99$cd$1@dont-email.me> <070520212033547025%nospam@nospam.invalid>

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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On 2021-05-07 5:33 p.m., nospam wrote:
> In article <s71s99$cd$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.
>>
>> Sorry, but you're wrong.
> 
> the above example works exactly as i described. i tested it prior to
> posting.
> 
> it's a very simple search that should not fail.
> 
> try the same set of words in bbedit. a search for 'ology' will find all
> of them. if you search for 'col', it will find only toxicology and
> oncology. both exactly as expected
> 
>> "Name ends with" works great.
> 
> additional steps that should not be needed.

So you're admitting you can search successfully for what you claimed 
could be searched for at all.

> 
>>> 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.
>>
>> It indexes everywhere.
> 
> no it doesn't.

Where does it not index?

> 
>>>>> 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.
>>
>> And the gain is that searches are nearly instantaneous.
> 
> other alternatives are also nearly instantaneous, but more importantly,
> they are more reliable.

So you claim...

...but you also claimed something was impossible that you now admit is 
possible.

> 
>> Tradeoffs.
> 
> reliability should never be traded off.
> 
> you also snipped the part where i mentioned about the index being
> silently corrupted, which turned out to be the cause of ant's problem.
> he's not the only one who has had that happen.
>

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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
  Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? David Ritz <dritz@mindspring.com> - 2021-05-06 20:47 -0500
  Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Fishrrman <Fishrrman2000@yahoo.com> - 2021-05-07 23:05 -0400
    Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Alan Baker <notonyourlife@no.no.no.no> - 2021-05-07 20:08 -0700
    Re: macOS Big Sur's search doesn't find everything? Lewis <g.kreme@kreme.dont-email.me> - 2021-05-08 09:54 +0000

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