File search never seems to work right...

[diablo75]

This is something I've never been able to figure out in the last 4 or 5 years since I started using Ubuntu.

Within Nautilus, there is now a search box at the top you can type things into to try and find files within the location you're currently looking at.

I just decided, as a test, to type "*.jpg", since, well you know, in Windows if you type that it'll show you every single JPG file on your hard drive if you're searching against C:

This search was done against a hard drive out of another computer I just attached to my system and booted into Ubuntu. Zero files come back in the search result. What gives? Is it because the drive needs to be indexed? Is there a way for me to search for things on a drive that hasn't been indexed without going to a command line? What am I still doing wrong? Just curious; in the mean time, I'm just going to reboot into Windows search again.

[Frogs Hair]

I install the gnome desktop utilities and use the included search tool. I have no idea why it works much better than the built in tool in Nautilus.

I ran a search for .png and got over 15,000 results before stopping the search.

[Bucky Ball]

Are you sure there's are .jpg files on the hard drive???

[erind]

[...]

I just decided, as a test, to type "*.jpg", since, well you know, in Windows if you type that it'll show you every single JPG file on your hard drive if you're searching against C:

This search was done against a hard drive out of another computer I just attached to my system and booted into Ubuntu. Zero files come back in the search result. What gives? Is it because the drive needs to be indexed?

[...]

The search in Nautilus is literal, so "*" will be part of the search, and not a wildcard as you expected. Use .jpg instead.

From my experience these are some of the things to keep in mind when using the search function of Nautilus, ( version 2.32.0 ) :

• There's no need to use wildcards - they are implicit.
• The search is NOT case sensitive.
• Separate the search key words with white space, to narrow the search down.
• The search is a logical "AND" of its search composing key words, but their order does NOT matter.

So a search for the file "file_name" can be done using the key words:

1. "file"
2. "name"
3. "name FILE"
4. "file name _"  
5. "_ name file"
6. "NaMe _ file"
7. "file_   name"
 ...

 # Note the spaces between key words in the above examples.

All of the above combinations of the search key words will find the file named "file_name" in Nautilus.