Retrieving Files Using Content Based Search

Content Based File Search is a Java application to find files that contain (or don’t contain) a given string. The string may be in plain text or it may be a Java regular expression. Such a trivial search should be part of the operating system, and in fact, once was. As bigger and more impressive features were added to Windows, it lost the ability to search files for arbitrary bytes of text. Windows 98/ME/2000 could find words buried in files with unknown formats; Windows XP and Vista search only their supported file types. Through the creation of files of content through applications, downloading of content from the Internet, or receiving content via email, this file system can become quite full of important content located throughout the system. Whether these files are carefully filed away in deeply nested hierarchical folders, or haphazardly filed away in a nearly flat system, at some point that data probably needs to be accessed again. It is at this point the problem of desktop search becomes apparent. In a system consisting of gigabytes and gigabytes of thousands or even millions of files, it is important have more efficient search engine for desktop. The speed of this program depends upon the speed of computer’s hardware and the complexity of the search string. When searching for plain ASCII text or Unicode characters from 0x20 to 0x7E, the “(raw data bytes)” encoding is about 40% faster than the local system’s in “(default encoding)”.

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