Understanding search for Empty FILES

Discussion related to "Everything" 1.5 Alpha.
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ChrisGreaves
Posts: 678
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2022 9:29 pm

Understanding search for Empty FILES

Post by ChrisGreaves »

Please see also Understanding search for Empty FOLDERS
I am still a New User and want to obtain a list of files that are empty; in this sense by empty I mean ZERO bytes on disk.

Code: Select all

T: file: !size:>0
I am looking only at my data partition drive T:
I am looking specifically for files, not folders.
And NOT files whose size in bytes is Greater Than zero. I carried this over from the topic Understanding search for Empty FOLDERS, but I am still digesting that topic.

Selecting all the files (Ctrl+A) and then pressing Alt+Enter brings up a Windows Explorer pane as a check:-
EmptyFolder_08.png
EmptyFolder_08.png (68.76 KiB) Viewed 621 times
I have noted that I have three files which, at times, I might consider "Empty"
EmptyFolder_03.png
EmptyFolder_03.png (60.13 KiB) Viewed 621 times
The MSWord2003 DOCument and the Excel2003 workbook resulted from loading those applications and immediately using File, saveAs without doing any work at all.
Cheers, Chris
NotNull
Posts: 5416
Joined: Wed May 24, 2017 9:22 pm

Re: Understanding search for Empty FILES

Post by NotNull »

ChrisGreaves wrote: Sat Jun 29, 2024 3:21 pm I have noted that I have three files which, at times, I might consider "Empty"
Consider using the content: or fromdisk:content functions to find out if these files do not contain visible text.
(regarding visible: defined macros or pictures will not be detected, so might be tricky to be certain)
void
Developer
Posts: 16428
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Understanding search for Empty FILES

Post by void »

Please use size:0 for files.

!childsize:>0 is only needed for folders because this search is applied to each child file. -any child file that matches will cause the folder to match.
!childsize:>0 will be replaced with totalchildsize:0 in 1384a+



To find files with no content:

t: file: !content:

This will match binary files too, I recommend using it with a document filter:

t: doc: !content:
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