Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!


Click here to return to the '10.4: Phrase searching using Spotlight and Python' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
10.4: Phrase searching using Spotlight and Python
Authored by: homersimp on Apr 09, '07 10:34:09AM

Spotlight's inability to search for phrases isn't just a "serious problem" -- it all but destroys its usefulness for anyone with a large number of files to search (I have more than 15 years' worth of personal files on my computer).

Does anyone know if Google Desktop Search can find phrases?



[ Reply to This | # ]
10.4: Phrase searching using Spotlight and Python
Authored by: cgnorwood on Apr 11, '07 06:32:51AM

Google Desktop Search definitely will search for exact phrases. Just add quote marks. However, this is often unnecessary, since even an "unquoted" phrase will produce a result list sorted by relevance, and the document with the text that most closely matches the complete phrase will appear on the top of the list. Furthermore, GDS provides a line of text showing the search terms in the context in which they appear in the document, something I've never seen Spotlight do. This is very helpful to me. Lastly, GDS is much faster than Spotlight on my system. I've had none of the slowdowns reported by others. (But I do have a quad 3.0Ghz MacPro.)



[ Reply to This | # ]