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.

> > 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.

> >>> 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.

> 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.

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.
>