Search questions

[pierre]

Hello,

my post was a little long, so here again (details below):

Is there any file or table or field where I can put special characters to make them "searchable" in indexed words?

Is there any way to find special characters like these: _, $, @, #, |, [, ], {, } in indexed words? At this time, I find indexed words with these characters: £, ¦, °, §, ¬, ¢, €, but not with the first group of special characters.

As said in the details below, I tried a lot of things, but without success.

[pierre]

Details:

1. I imported some data. There was no option for "index digits", but there should be, according to this forum. So I suppose the program indexes digits now in any case, is this right?

2. With Quick Search, I can find words or keywords, with these special characters: £, ¦, °, §, ¬, ¢, € (in "Search for", I enter £*, without quotes), but I cannot find words or automatic keywords with _, $, @, #, |, [, ], {, }. Is this correct? (Here and below, the checkboxes at the bottom of the screen are all unchecked, except for the second one, "Match whole words", which is checked but greyed out, so cannot be unchecked.)

3. Do you know of other special characters that could be found, or do I have to try them all, one by one?

4. The above is Quick Search only. So I also tried with Advanced Search, which has the same "Search for" entry field. So I try the unsuccessful characters above again, enclosing them with double quotes, in that "Search for" field: "_" or "_*", but this gives no result, when it should.

5. So I do again Advanced Search, now trying to use the fields "Item/Attribute", "Not", "Comparison" and "Value": In "Item/Attribute", I enter "(Item)" or "Item Text": I don't know which one is right here?

6. In field "Comparison", I enter "matches wildcard" instead of "contain keywords", in field "value" I enter _ or "_" (with or without quotes, I don't know which one is correct?)

7. As before, but in "value", I enter _* or "_*" (with or without quotes, I don't know which one is correct?)

8. All these do not give any result (0 matching items), when there should be results. So I also try to enter _ or _* or "_" or "_*" into the "Search for" field, meaning that here, I do it both ways at the same time, the search term is in the "Search for" field, and again in the "Value" field: Is this correct proceeding? But no results.

9. In "Tools-Compact and Repair" the option "Enable enhanced full-text search features" is checked, and I do "Compact/Repair database" (both) for rebuilding the index, but this doesn't make any difference, there is no matching item.

10. From help and forum, I had understood that special characters could be searched by "matches wildcard" search if not by "contains keywords" search, so how can I search for such characters? Somebody in the forum said wildcard search is "brute force", will find anything but will be slow. So it seems this search is good enough for this initial search, in order to replace problem characters with characters that can be included in keywords.

11. Is there any option or editable table or editable list in which I can include special characters into those special characters that are found, by keywords search or at least by wildcard search? As said, european currency symbols like pound and euro can be included in keywords, and the dollar sign can not, and will not even be found be wildcard search, or the ¦ sign can be included even in a keyword, when the | sign cannot even be found by wildcard search.

12. I need this search for non-keyword special characters since I want to change them to keyword-searchable characters (from | to ¦ for example), by first searching for |, have the matching items in the "Search Results", and then do a manual "Replace" for any such item in the "Search Results", one by one, which is necessary because there is no global replace. The idea behind is, there are 200 items, but perhaps only 10 items containing the | sign, and so it would be helpful to have only 10 items to process manually, instead of 200, especially since I have to do this with many special characters, one by one.

13. I would not like to do special keywords with special characters, manually, one by one for every item, but I would like to use automatically generated keywords only but containing some special characters (¦ instead of the impossible (?) |, for example, or £ instead of $).

14. Since the help "Phrase Search" brings the subjects "Extended Phrase Search (less efficient but comprehensive):" not independently, but under the heading "Full-Text Search Enhancements Disabled", I unchecked these search enhancements and rebuilt the index, then tried again.

15. Here, the "Match whole words" option is not greyed out anymore, and I try with this option checked or unchecked: Especially unchecked, this should bring some results, but it doesn't.

16. As above, I do not find any of these special characters. I leave the "Search for" field alone since I go strictly by the help file in "Extended Phrase Search (less efficient but comprehensive):", and in the first and only search line, I do, as stated in the help file, "Item Text", then "matches wildcard", then the special character, "#" for example, with or without quotes, and with or without a "*", so I have 4 alternatives, #, #*, "#" and "#*" - with the option under 14. checked or unchecked, this makes 8 alternatives. None of them finds the special character in question, and I tried with several of them, all from the "cannot find" group above.

17. I have seen I could perhaps change such characters automatically, with SQLite, but since you say it could corrupt my file, I prefer to search in Ultra Recall (but how?), then do the replace for each concerned item, one by one, because overall, this would be less work to do than to compare the whole file after processing it with SQLite.

18. I should have done all this before importing my material into Ultra Recall, but wasn't aware it hasn't global replace, and wasn't aware it had problems with special characters, so I now have to do the necessary changes within Ultra Recall, or I lose the changes I have made here before becoming aware of the problem.

[kinook]

http://kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=3038

http://kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=2825

[pierre]

Is there any file or table or field where I can put special characters to make them "searchable" in indexed words?

Is there any way to find special characters like these: _, $, @, #, |, [, ], {, } in indexed words? At this time, I find indexed words with these characters: £, ¦, °, §, ¬, ¢, €, but not with the first group of special characters.

OR AT LEAST BY EXTENDED PHRASE SEARCH, not neccessarily in INDEXED words!

As said in the details below, I tried a lot of things, but without success. I would like to do it in Ultra Recall, not with SQLite.

[kinook]

Works ok in my tests. In the attached database, all the searches under Notes match the task1 item on the same user-defined keywords as the search.

[pierre]

Thank you for your effort!

I had seen this function but did not use it because my problem is not definite keywords with special characters, but lines or real, multiple words beginning with such characters, so I cannot enter "#keyword1", "#keyword2", and so on, but I must be able to find the "#" before any "keyword12345".

I mean, I need these characters searchable independently from specific keywords.

I must divide my problem up:

One, I would like to search for these special characters in any way, in order to replace them with searchable special characters then. If really neccessary, I could do it per hand.

Two, I would like to know if there is a way to make some of these special characters searchable in keywords, by adding them (but as characters, not together with specific keywords) into a list, in order to have them available for further use, in which case I would not have to replace them but could use them in Ultra Recall.

I could vary my system a little in order to meet the demands of Ultra Recall, but keywords would be in the form, as an example, #a28, #a120, #b14, #b3, and so on.

This means, I cannot enter "keywords" "#a28", "#a29", and so on, but "#a1" to "#a999" should be recognized as keywords, that's why I'm asking if there is a list or such in which I can add special characters to be recognized as parts of keywords.

There is this thread:

http://www.kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=2783&highlight=brute+force

with this post:

07-10-2007, 02:50 PM
quant Registered User Join Date: 11-30-2006
Posts: 962

the answer depends on what characters can "keyword" be composed of. I'd think that only letters a-z A-Z (+ numbers, if you specify in the setting) are considered. So it means that your "a/c" was not keyworded, and therefore cannot be found by typing only a/c, because that kind of search searches only for keywords (in this case in the user defined keyword attribute). If you enclose it in the double quotes, that is a phrase search, ie. brute-force

So I thought any special character could be searched for by phrase search, but the "/" character is one of the searchable characters.

Interesting detail here: The searchable character "¦" can be found in keywords, by keyword search (when "|" cannot be found), but in phrase search, "¦*" (with the quotes), neither "|" nor "¦" can be found. So these problems are even bigger than I thought.

If you know exactly which special characters are searchable and which are not, you can live with that, but when the same character, here "¦", can be found, and then not, there is always the risk of not finding important things, and at this moment, I do not know why this "¦" behaves in different ways.

[pierre]

Is there any user who uses a lot of these special characters and knows about details: which are without problems, which are better to be avoided, which are to be avoided in any circumstances?

[kinook]

Searching on just the special characters also works in my tests.

[pierre]

I see the special character is ¦ in this example, it's 1 find, and it's several items. If I do such a search today, Ultra Recall behaves in a different way from what it did yesterday. Today, I enter the character, single, without quotes or asterisk (and nothing checked from the checkboxes at the bottom of the screen), into "Search for" (QuickSearch), and then I got "196 matching items", because I have 196 items, but about 190 "finds" here are incorrect. I get the same result, meaning "196 matching items...done", for every such single special character today, ¦, #, | and so on.

I don't know which option setting I changed between yesterday and today might have caused this.

I also think that the absence of a global replace function is not good, and users in this forum asked for it in 2006.

But I also think that the way Ultra Recall processes external files, for example image files, just by importing the link to the file into the tree, but displaying the picture in the program, as any content stored here, is extremely helpful, or rather, it's absolutely outstanding: In Jot+, a 330 kb png picture needs 1,100 kb, the same file blows up a Maple file by 2,800 kb, and in Ultra Recall it's almost nothing in the Ultra Recall file and 330 kb in the file system.

Is there a chance Ultra Recall will get global search and replace? I mean, users asked for it in 2006, and it's 2013 at this moment... The utility of such a feature is not only when importing from another program, but afterwards, you decide to replace some keywords with some other, in your whole file, for example "Telephone " by "Tel:" and many more, and I don't think having to use SQLite for this, with the risk of not knowing it changed other things as well, is far from being an ideal solution. (In Jot+, global search and replace is even with regular expressions.)

[kinook]

Maybe try enabling full-text search enhancements if disabled. Otherwise, please send the info requested at
http://kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=3038

Regarding global search and replace, it's not real high on the priority list. Global replacement can be done in titles, attributes, and keywords via SQLite.
http://kinook.com/Forum/showthread.php?t=2825