Hacker News Reader

Comment by misterdata | Hacker News Reader

For those of us on Windows: Everything [1] does the job quite nicely with much less verbose syntax.

I've been using this for years and it is LIGHTNING fast.

No need to "index" all the files because it reads directly from the MFT. If you create a new file matching the search pattern it's already sitting in the results window by the time you alt-tab.

Also, the "directory size" equivalent of Everything is WizTree [1] ... much faster than WinDirStat, which I see recommended way too often.

[1] http://antibody-software.com/web/software/software/wiztree-f...

Are you sure it doesn't index anything? There is even a section in the settings called Indexes.

Also when you launch it first, it's going to be empty and says it's scanning your folders and it takes a little bit until you see something.

I think it is still indexing (maybe using the MFT instead of recursively listing files and directories), it's just a lot better than Windows search indexing. And it might use this [1] to keep up to date? It's mentioned in the settings

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USN_Journal

No I'm not sure. Maybe it builds a rudimentary index... but give it a shot yourself and see. 15 seconds after installing, you can search your entire system instantly. It's crazy whatever it is doing.

And yes I do believe it uses the USN Journal to stay up to date.

There's actually a wikipedia page, and it explains how it works. As we suspected, it uses the MFT for initial indexing and change journal for updates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software)

Thanks for WizTree, you're right that it's an order of magnitude faster than WinDirStat. Only thing it's missing is that graphical block view, but for my usecase it will be perfect.

@all, do you guys know if osx / linux have the MFT like structures accessible to the user? Any links?

Linux ext systems have inodes, which store all the metadata except the name. Directories contain name + inode number.

NTFS stores the name in the MFT instead, which makes hard links a bit weirder.

I've been using "SpaceSniffer" which is similarly faster than WinDirStat.

Directory Report is also faster than WinDirStat, and It can create more reports

Everything is pretty awesome, one of the things I really miss on Linux.

When I last looked for a Linux replacement for it, none had the real time updates or the instant search ui, and even those that claimed to index the file system for a quick search were very slow. I actually ended up writing my own hacky and rudimentary GUI over locate to achieve something that fits my needs (and of course doesn't support real time updates).

Maybe things changed since then? Any chance that the HN crowd knows of a good Linux replacement for Everything?

I don't know what features exactly Everything has, but maybe fsearch is a good alternative?

http://www.fsearch.org/

Try out KDE's search. It does realtime fulltext indexing and just works.

Also integrated with the KRunner framework.

Have you tried FZF (the fuzzy finder)?

https://github.com/junegunn/fzf

It integrates well with UNIX shells, editors (VIM integration is excellent), git log search etc. It's really versatile.

Of course, there is also q:

http://harelba.github.io/q/

for something that is more like the software described by OP.

I heard that Everything is dependent on the exact format of NTFS. The same algorithm isn't applicable to ext4 or HFS+.

Everything is awesome

I'd really like to know why Microsoft can't do something like this in Windows itself. Everything is very useful.

Isn't that what they tried to do with WinFS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

I don't know their reasons for WinFS, but I do know that Everything's authors figured out a long time ago how to get great search with Windows' current FS.

My guess is that MS needs an excuse to index the contents of your files.

Everything does not index the content of your files, only the name and some attributes.

Also MS already index file contents by default, it just sucks at it. There have been several occasions where I use the find file by name syntax and Windows can't even find the file in the current folder.

This is exactly my point. The key to finding files is to use

  name:*mylostfile*.txt

But Everything excels at this so pretend you never saw it.

I recently learned that you can also do advanced search (for e.g. date of modification) in Everything 1.4 (beta):

filename dm:>=16/05/2017 size:5mb..9mb parents:>=3

This is pretty amazing. I've been using a Windows program called Agent Ransack [0] for finding files with regex, but this Everything program is so much faster. Incredibly so. Thanks for the tip!

[0] https://www.mythicsoft.com/agentransack

Everything is one of the first tools I install on every windows box. For me personally it is a must have. I don't think I know of any other tool which altered my workflow that heavily.

Does it keep everything local?

I couldn't find anything on the FAQ and I remember a similar tool posted here on HN and people complained that it called home for some search functionality.

everything in Everything is local

Cool, thanks

Agent Ransack is another good one.

This is my secret weapon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com