A) I've been using Everything (371) for the last 3-4 years. One thing I've noticed is that occasionally I'll pop up the window (I use Windows-Q to bring it up). I then start typing in what I want to search for. However, about 10% of the time, I'll get the first 1-2 characters typed in and then Everything just hangs for between 1 or 2 minutes before the rest of what I've typed in finally appears. At that point, Everything displays the results. Why does this delay occur? I've always been under the impression that Everything simply watches file system activity and updates it's database "on-the-fly". I realize that when the database doesn't exist, or when Everything starts up, it's going to scan all the NTFS drives that are allowed. However, am I correct that aside from this, Everything shouldn't stop and do a full scan at any other time??
B) On another topic, I know that many people have commented on this but, are there any plans to allow a different default sort order? I prefer a sort by path, myself. I recall a posting by Void where he said something to the effect that Everything always puts (or gets?) files in name order. Although that makes a little bit of sense, I would imagine that no matter how Everything scans for files, it has to look folder by folder before it can actually look for files inside the folder. Doesn't that mean that Everything could keep track of what folder it's about to list matching files in and keep it in that folder? By the way, I realize that folders might not be in alphabetic order because of how the Operating System (Windows) creates a folder.
So let me explain what I'm talking about. (Forgive me for a moment while I put my propeller helmet on.) Okay, ready to go...
So when a folder is being created, Windows normally looks for the first available directory entry to create the folder entity. For example, you might have a drive with just three folders: ALPHA, BRAVO, and CHARLIE. Imagine you delete BRAVO and create a new folder called DELTA. Windows (for example) creates DELTA in the space where BRAVO used to be. If you could read the actual drive sector, you'd see the three folders lists as ALPHA, DELTA, and CHARLIE. Windows (file) Explore defaults to alphabetical-ascending folder/file listing. Also, if you execute DIR from the command line, Windows (by default) lists files and folders in alphabetical order with files and folders intermixed. Having said all this, we still have folders saved in whatever order the files and folders were created in. For example: ALPHA, DELTA, and CHARLIE. What I would therefore expect is that when Everything lists matches, it would normally look in the first folder (ALPHA) and list all the matching files in it first. Then, it would look in DELTA and list all matching files there second. Lastly, it would look in CHARLIE and list all it's matching files there third.
Thus, if I was looking for *.TXT files, I would expect to see something like:
D:\ALPHA\Sample1.txt
D:\ALPHA\Sample2.txt
D:\DELTA\Sample1.txt
D:\CHARLIE\Sample3.txt
D:\CHARLIE\Sample5.txt
Notice that the DELTA is listed before CHARLIE, in this example. At least here things are for the most part in Path order.
Can someone (Void?) comment on this to let me know if I am understanding this correctly? And whether changing the default sort order is possible?
[edit] I just downloaded and am using 451a currently, I had hoped this would resolve these issues except that the options only allow sorting by file size or file date or FRN. (What is FRN?) I guess I'm still hoping for a default order by Path.
Frank
P.S. One more thing: If you ENABLE REGEX, where can I get a list of typical syntax search strings so that I can learn how to use REGEX. If I do so, will it only allow searching on file and folder name or possibly on size or date too?
Thanks for your patience in reading through this long, verbose, posting!
