Copyright (C) 2000-2003 David Vest. All rights reserved.
** Introduction **
Welcome to Agent Ransack the free professional file searching utility.
Agent Ransack is a tool for finding files and information on your hard drive fast and efficiently.
Agent Ransack provides compelling advantages over similar search tools:
- Regular expressions that allow complex rule based searches.
- Immediate contents results view.
- Various wizards to walk the user through the searching process.
Agent Ransack can be used as a replacement or a companion to the standard Windows Find. Agent Ransack provides both a basic interface, similar to Windows Find, and a more advanced interface (the default) for the 'Expert user'. Both interfaces provide Wizards to walk the user through the searching process.
Users familiar with the UNIX GREP command will appreciate the ability to search the contents of files using regular expressions and be able to view found contents without having to open the files.
** Use and distribution information **
Agent Ransack is provided FREE of charge for personal or corporate use. You may distribute the complete Agent Ransack installation files provided files are not removed or modified and provided that you do not charge for the distribution. Please read the license agreement for more information.
** Installing Agent Ransack **
- Unzip the installation files into a temporary directory.
- Run setup.exe from that temporary directory
- Follow setup installation instructions
- You may delete the temporary directory following a successful installation
Files installed in Agent Ransack directory:
AgentRansack.EXE Agent Ransack executable
AgentRansack.HLP Agent Ransack help file
AgentRansack.CHM Agent Ransack help file in HTMLHelp format
ReadMe.TXT General information about Agent Ransack (this file)
Uninst.ISU InstallShield uninstallation file
Other files installed include:
InstallShield uninstallation executables
** Requirements **
Agent Ransack has been tested on Windows 95/98/NT/2000 and will need approximately 1MB of disk space to install.
** The Help File **
The help file was created using an excellent product from EC Software called Help & Manual 2.5. For further information, and to download an evaluation copy, please visit their web site at: http://www.ec-software.com.
** Version History **
1.0 Apr 10th 2000. First version. If I get sufficient feedback then I will introduce new features into Agent Ransack.
1.0.1 Apr 19th 2000. Bug fix release.
Fixed following bugs:
- Registration codes not working
- Error message when listing directory history if not connected to network and history includes a networked drive.
- Did not fully validate search directory name.
1.0.2 May 31st 2000. Minor release.
- Added support for different Windows font sizes (e.g. Large fonts).
- Added additional file list view columns: Size, Modified, Type.
- Added sort functionality to file list view.
- Added ability to 'Remember' options.
- Fixed interpretation of '&' bug in Contents view.
- Folder drop down speeded up.
- Basic Search Wizard examples unclear.
- Size filter bug fixed.
- Various minor bugs.
1.0.3 <Not offically released>
- All fields are now horizontally scrollable
- Fixed "Abnormal program termination" on bad files bug (uncaught exception).
- Uses Windows' color preferences
- Remembers window size, position & font.
- Fixed 'Please enter date/time' bug. (Replaced COleDateTime with CComDATE.)
1.5.0 October 21st 2000. Enhancement release.
- Highlights found text in user specified color
- Command line parameters
- Ability to switch off regular expression for contents searching
- Better print preview and page numbers
- Supports UNC names
- Ability to specify exclude file name expression
- Shows folder names
- Shows full file information
- Minor aesthetic changes
1.6.0 February 23rd 2001. Enhancement release.
- Ability to save results (file names and/or contents) to a file or the clipboard.
- Shell extensions. Agent Ransack adds itself to the context menu for folders and the Find menu.
- One Phase Searching option to allow for more efficient contents searching of large drives (disables progress meter).
- Command line parameter to perform search without GUI and output results to a file (AgentRansack.exe -h to see all parms).
- Access to folder denied bug fix (mainly a problem with Network drives).
- Better support for non-English language characters.
- Truncates lines that are over 5,000 characters.
- Supports DOS expression ';' for specifying multiple file names.
- Printing bug fix.
- Minor aesthetic changes.
1.7.0 July 6th 2001. Enhancement release.
- Ability to search multiple folders.
- Ability to specify Unix (LF) and Mac (CR) as valid EOL markers (accessed through Configuration menu).
- Context menu support for multiple file selections (e.g. copy and delete multiple files).
- No longer filters out foreign characters (i.e. allows anything over ASCII 32).
- Ability to clear drop down list history added.
- Installation is now self-contained EXE (sorry it's taken so long).
- Keyboard accelerator problem fixed (e.g. Ctrl + N etc.) and added Ctrl + A for Select All.
- Keyboard shortcuts added for dialogs (e.g. Alt + N for filename).
- More responsive to Cancel Search, especially when searching large files.
- Better validation when restoring Window to saved position and size.
- Better support for font size changes.
- Tab functionality fixed.
1.7.1 July 10th 2001. Bug fix release
- Fixed bug in non-string command line switches (thanks to Jody Adair for pointing it out).
- Options settings not being remembered, fixed.
- Match case on contents searching not working correctly, fixed.
1.7.2 September 9th 2002. Bug fix release
- Expression Wizard bug. Not correctly handling a couple of expression types (reported by Robert McAllester).
- Now using ShellExecuteEx instead of ShellExecute. Fixed inconsistent behaviour with WinNT.
- Fixed problem with saving results to clipboard (reported by Mike Stewart).
- Fixed major memory leak problem.
- Command line '-o' option now streams directly to output file allowing unlimited search result sizes.
1.7.3 March 3rd 2003. Bug fix release.
- Copy acting as Cut on certain versions of Windows 98 (thanks to Kasauli for reporting bug and testing fix).
- Executable unnecessarily linked against oleacc.dll (Win 95/NT does not install this Active Accessibility support DLL).
- WinXP shell extension bug fix.
** Other information **
Thanks to David Horton for testing and providing great feedback.
The regular expression engine used in Agent Ransack is derived from work by Henry Spencer. His copyright message is shown below:
