On Sat, 2007-12-01 at 10:30 +0000, Chris Jones wrote:
> >
> > But then you can use "find". I use it all the time with hundreds
> > (thousands?) of files in multiple directories with even more sub
> > directories.
>
> find only searches the file names - These desktop search tools do much
> more than this - They search *inside* the files. They know how read most
> of the common file formats (including images, searching the EXIM
> comments and music files) and will match your search to any file which
> matches.
But then, he'll say, he uses grep.
>
> No use of find, or careful organisation of your file system can do this.
The other disadvantages of command-line tools are:
- They can't re-use information learned in one scan to make another scan
more efficient. Indexers index once (and incrementally after) and the
searches run against the indexed data--typically much faster.
- The traditional tools don't understand specialized files. It doesn't
help much to know that your fedora-list mbox matches a phrase without
knowing which message it is, if you have a few hundred messages.
On the other hand, indexers:
- Use resources in the background, possibly at inconvenient times.
- Take up (possibly significant) disk space with indices.
- Index only what they recognize.
So each method has its good and bad points.
>
> Chris
>
>
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
