Searching in pdf file using regex

Question

First I want to thank you for the terrific new release of filelocator pro 7.
So many new beautiful features!
Searching in PDF files is now so fast!

I would like to ask you just a little question:
If I search within a pdf file in the text tab, and I want to search p.e. the word "ananas"
Filelocator found in my case a lot of "bananas".

The first thing I did is to put a space before ananas, but filelocator didn't search anything.
Then I tried to give bounderies at the search using regex:
a) \bananas\b --> this did not give any results (filelocator did not search anything)
b) <</strong>ananas> --> this did not give any results either (filelocator did not search anything)

What did I wrong?
(my regex = perl compatible regex)

Thank you.

Answer 1

It sounds like you're doing the right thing the only problem I can think of is that the expression type hasn't been set properly. In this screenshot I'm using Boolean expression with < and > to mark the word boundary:

but you can do the same thing with regular expressions as long as you change the expression type:

It doesn't matter if it's a PDF, TXT, or DOC, all text in the Text tab is treated the same.

Comments

Oh yes, that's what I've done (regular expression) but it didn't search in my pdf. I searched on the perl page to find the correct boundery mode. I inserted before and after \b. Filelocator did nothing at all after I pushed the Enter key on my keyboard. I tried to change the word also but it still did not search. ..... Now when I just did it again it works fine :( I don't know whats happening but it seems to me that sometimes FL doesn't react. Now I changed word and again it doesn't work, (the word is in the text). I searched for bananas (\bananas\b) in regex and it has found ananas :(

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Update: I searched in Boolean for <ananas> and it returned the yellow background coloured search item inserted in the "containting text:" box.

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I'm getting a little confused... Are you able to reproduce a problem consistently, ie do you have a set of steps that you could send us to reproduce the issue? Screenshots would be great (if it'd be easier please use email support@mythicsoft.com). Everything I try seems to work just fine.

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Sorry, I just noted the reason why FL moves the cursor to the search items found from the search box (containing text:) when I pushed the Enter Key after the search item in the Text Tab.. Because the Blue colored box and the yellow coloured checkbox are checked. I thought that FL only let me go to the search items from the Text Tab after pushing Enter, Enter and Enter again.

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I think we need to do a little work with the text tab. There's no good reason why it's not search-as-you-type and to also provide additional feedback on number of results found. FYI, if you want to move to next search hit try F3.