Search Syntax Help Suggestions

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fhbutler
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2026 3:50 pm

Search Syntax Help Suggestions

Post by fhbutler »

There was something that caused me a great deal of confusion when I started using Everything that IMO should be mentioned as the VERY FIRST THING (or close to it) in any help that is provided for search syntax.

By default, Everything puts the * (asterisk) wildcard at the beginning and end of what you type when you enter a search, but if you explicitly include a wildcard it does NOT do this. So for example if I type in foobar it will find all files that contain foobar anywhere in the filename, but if I type in foobar* it will only find files that start with foobar.

Continuing with this example, I found it very strange when I typed in foobar and got a list of files, that this list would then get reduced to a shorter list when I added * at the end. I didn't come to understand the EXACT reason that this was happening until sometime later (via an AI query - I think this AI stuff is going to catch on! :) ) It is BRILLIANT and extremely useful that it works this way but it wasn't until I understood exactly what was going on here that the full power of the search algorithm became apparent and less confusing.

I would suggest that an explanation of how this works appear in the top item of this pinned help topic, and added to the top of the "Help > Search Syntax" menu item.
void
Developer
Posts: 19839
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Search Syntax Help Suggestions

Post by void »

Thank you for your feedback fhbutler,

Moved from Search Syntax Help.

Search syntax help is available in Everything from the Help menu.
I recommend trying the Advanced Search from the Search menu to help learn the Everything search syntax.



Everything does a partial search by default.
Matching whole words can be enabled under the Search menu.

Wildcards (? and *) enable globbing which matches the whole filename by default.
Matching the whole filename when using wildcards can be disabled under Tools -> Options -> Search.

This will be clarified in the Everything 1.5 -> Help -> Search syntax.


I would suggest that an explanation of how this works appear in the top item of this pinned help topic, and added to the top of the "Help > Search Syntax" menu item.
It's already at the top as an announcement.
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