File Buddy can search disks for files and folders matching criteria you specify in the File Buddy Find window. Try it out and read the Balloon Help.
In addition to the usual Find behavior you expect, File Buddy provides some additional options.
You can create Find Settings files. Double-clicking one of these opens the File Buddy Find window and loads the saved settings into it. This makes the Find function available without having to start File Buddy and then in a separate action, select Find… from the Find menu. Given File Buddy's normal behavior with dropped files, this requires that File Buddy special case its Find Settings files. If File Buddy is opening exactly one file and it's a Find Settings, it loads the settings. If a Find Settings is one of two or more files dropped, File Buddy treats it as it would any other file. There is also a Set: popup menu so you can save and reuse settings easily.
You can search for files that match some aspect of an existing file using the Find Similar… command in the Find menu, or the Find Similar option for dropped files.
Prior to version 3.4, disk searching required that the volume support the Mac Toolbox call PBCatSearch. Volumes not supporting PBCatSearch (such as some network volumes) could not be searched. This restriction no longer present in versions 3.4 and later.
Searching Inside Files
File Buddy will scan a file for a string of up to 63 characters during a Find. The scan mode is set by the popup menu to the right of the field into which you type the desired text. The default scan mode is Normal, which ignores case and diacritical marks. Case Sensitive scans respect case, but ignore diacritical marks. An Exact scan requires an exact match, and should be useful for searches of 2-byte text. To speed searches that look in files, certain kinds of documents are not scanned. The following are not scanned: applications, control panels, extensions, fonts, etc.; HyperCard stacks; TIFF, PICT, and Photoshop graphics files; AIFF sound files; QuickTime movies; THINK Reference database files; StuffIt archives. If you have suggestions for others, let me know.
You can speed things up considerably by specifying additional criteria as well, such as file type or dates. This will reduce the number of files whose contents are searched.
Restoring Last Settings
When opening the Find window, the default behavior is to restore the settings used in the last search. There is a preference in the Preferences dialog to turn that off.
Search Speed
Finding speed can vary widely based on the criteria used. Certain criteria are fast, such as 'name contains', dates, label, file type and creator. Others are slow, such as file size, ignoring items in certain folders, and restricting the search to certain folders.
For example, on one computer:
A 1 sec search for items with names that contain 'tt' finds 72 items.
A 4.5 sec search for items with names that contain 't' finds 2039 items.
A 13 sec search for files over 100K finds 264 items.
A 41 sec search for files over 100K and not in the Preferences folder finds 258 items.
When you set a file size criteria to do a Find which uses file sizes, the item below it is set to exclude folders. You can change it, but if folders are included, their sizes are used in the search, but this will slow things down quite a bit.
