Searching text in LIN file

[andych]

I have DOTW saved in my HD. When I do a search of some text that exists (e.g. Fred), windows return not found.

What happens? :P :ph34r:

 

BTW would Fred be doing some DOTW once in a while? Really missed it .... :lol: :lol:

[DenisO]

Have you tried opening the .lin file with Wordpad - that should work as it is a text file.

 

Denis

[andych]

Opening the file with notepad would work.

 

What I like to do is searching for e.g. 'Hamman' in e.g. 100 lin files.

I use the search function from windows start menu but it returns no items found. :)

[inquiry]

the reason you can't find it is the the "word" fred doesn't exist in a lin file.

 

the lin file format is more or less free of spaces, such that the players are listed soemthing like this:

 

qx|o1|pn|fred,andych,inquiry,DenisO|st||

 

Where pn means player names, and then the four players are listed separated by commas but not spaces. So you are looking for (space)Fred(space) where space is blank area, and what is in the file is ,fred, or |fred, or ,fred| depending upon his seat at the table.

 

What you need is a search tool that will search your hard drive using wildcard characters. Then you can search for *fred* within a lin file and find all of them. Grep is a unix program that does this, and I suspect some of the MS or google toolbars people download to search their own computer for info will do it as well.

[csdenmark]

the reason you can't find it is the the "word" fred doesn't exist in a lin file.

 

the lin file format is more or less free of spaces, such that the players are listed soemthing like this:

 

qx|o1|pn|fred,andych,inquiry,DenisO|st||

 

Where pn means player names, and then the four players are listed separated by commas but not spaces. So you are looking for (space)Fred(space) where space is blank area, and what is in the file is ,fred, or |fred, or ,fred| depending upon his seat at the table.

 

What you need is a search tool that will search your hard drive using wildcard characters. Then you can search for *fred* within a lin file and find all of them. Grep is a unix program that does this, and I suspect some of the MS or google toolbars people download to search their own computer for info will do it as well.

Cannot be right Ben. I tried to search for Hamman in this file: "C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.pbn" . It returned I think about 8 positive results, all like this which was 1st result: [North "Hamman"]

 

I think Denis is right.

[inquiry]

the reason you can't find it is the the "word" fred doesn't exist in a lin file.

 

the lin file format is more or less free of spaces, such that the players are listed soemthing like this:

 

qx|o1|pn|fred,andych,inquiry,DenisO|st||

 

Where pn means player names, and then the four players are listed separated by commas but not spaces. So you are looking for (space)Fred(space) where space is blank area, and what is in the file is ,fred, or |fred, or ,fred| depending upon his seat at the table.

 

What you need is a search tool that will search your hard drive using wildcard characters. Then you can search for *fred* within a lin file and find all of them. Grep is a unix program that does this, and I suspect some of the MS or google toolbars people download to search their own computer for info will do it as well.

Cannot be right Ben. I tried to search for Hamman in this file: "C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.pbn" . It returned I think about 8 positive results, all like this which was 1st result: [North "Hamman"]

 

I think Denis is right.

What you found was a PBN file, note the name ""C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.pbn"

 

PBN File format is quite different. See the names are stored quite differently in pbn files... here they are stored one per line like this:

[West "fred"]

[North "andych"]

[East "inquiry"]

[south "csdenmark"]

 

Notice the difference. And importatly, the quote marks are handled as spaces by the windows search routine, so if you search for text Fred and the text reads,

I said, "Fred, you are the greatest"

 

It will find fred just fine (periods are handled well too, it is just strings that are not easily identified as words that are a problem).

 

I suggest you do this claus....

 

Click in start menu in windows

Click search (I think it is find in some earlier version of windows

choose all files and folders

Enter *.lin for the file type

Enter csdenmark under "a word or phrase in the file"

then press search...

 

And think about the hundreds or thousands of lin files you have on your computer and see how many YOU find,

[Gerben42]

What you want is something like this: www.wingrep.com

[csdenmark]

the reason you can't find it is the the "word" fred doesn't exist in a lin file.

 

the lin file format is more or less free of spaces, such that the players are listed soemthing like this:

 

qx|o1|pn|fred,andych,inquiry,DenisO|st||

 

Where pn means player names, and then the four players are listed separated by commas but not spaces. So you are looking for (space)Fred(space) where space is blank area, and what is in the file is ,fred, or |fred, or ,fred| depending upon his seat at the table.

 

What you need is a search tool that will search your hard drive using wildcard characters. Then you can search for *fred* within a lin file and find all of them. Grep is a unix program that does this, and I suspect some of the MS or google toolbars people download to search their own computer for info will do it as well.

Cannot be right Ben. I tried to search for Hamman in this file: "C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.pbn" . It returned I think about 8 positive results, all like this which was 1st result: [North "Hamman"]

 

I think Denis is right.

What you found was a PBN file, note the name ""C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.pbn"

 

PBN File format is quite different. See the names are stored quite differently in pbn files... here they are stored one per line like this:

[West "fred"]

[North "andych"]

[East "inquiry"]

[south "csdenmark"]

 

Notice the difference. And importatly, the quote marks are handled as spaces by the windows search routine, so if you search for text Fred and the text reads,

I said, "Fred, you are the greatest"

 

It will find fred just fine (periods are handled well too, it is just strings that are not easily identified as words that are a problem).

 

I suggest you do this claus....

 

Click in start menu in windows

Click search (I think it is find in some earlier version of windows

choose all files and folders

Enter *.lin for the file type

Enter csdenmark under "a word or phrase in the file"

then press search...

 

And think about the hundreds or thousands of lin files you have on your computer and see how many YOU find,

I dont know exactly what I am doing here , but this file I found 32 hits. I have no search option clicking start I think. I entered instead Windows Explorer. searched for *.lin and found 913 hits for that.

 

I chose this one:

"C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.lin", opened in Wordpad and via search option I got 32 hits for Hamman

 

First hit found in this line: pn|Wolff,Multon,Hamman,Mouiel,Levy,Meckstroth,Mari,Rodwell|pg||

 

Voila - happy for the result - but I don't really know if that is what we are talking about Ben.

 

Have I found new options for LIN-files or misunderstood something?

[Jangvik]

the reason you can't find it is the the "word" fred doesn't exist in a lin file.

 

the lin file format is more or less free of spaces, such that the players are listed soemthing like this:

 

qx|o1|pn|fred,andych,inquiry,DenisO|st||

 

Where pn means player names, and then the four players are listed separated by commas but not spaces. So you are looking for (space)Fred(space) where space is blank area, and what is in the file is ,fred, or |fred, or ,fred| depending upon his seat at the table.

 

What you need is a search tool that will search your hard drive using wildcard characters. Then you can search for *fred* within a lin file and find all of them. Grep is a unix program that does this, and I suspect some of the MS or google toolbars people download to search their own computer for info will do it as well.

Cannot be right Ben. I tried to search for Hamman in this file: "C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.pbn" . It returned I think about 8 positive results, all like this which was 1st result: [North "Hamman"]

 

I think Denis is right.

What you found was a PBN file, note the name ""C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.pbn"

 

PBN File format is quite different. See the names are stored quite differently in pbn files... here they are stored one per line like this:

[West "fred"]

[North "andych"]

[East "inquiry"]

[south "csdenmark"]

 

Notice the difference. And importatly, the quote marks are handled as spaces by the windows search routine, so if you search for text Fred and the text reads,

I said, "Fred, you are the greatest"

 

It will find fred just fine (periods are handled well too, it is just strings that are not easily identified as words that are a problem).

 

I suggest you do this claus....

 

Click in start menu in windows

Click search (I think it is find in some earlier version of windows

choose all files and folders

Enter *.lin for the file type

Enter csdenmark under "a word or phrase in the file"

then press search...

 

And think about the hundreds or thousands of lin files you have on your computer and see how many YOU find,

I dont know exactly what I am doing here , but this file I found 32 hits. I have no search option clicking start I think. I entered instead Windows Explorer. searched for *.lin and found 913 hits for that.

 

I chose this one:

"C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.lin", opened in Wordpad and via search option I got 32 hits for Hamman

 

First hit found in this line: pn|Wolff,Multon,Hamman,Mouiel,Levy,Meckstroth,Mari,Rodwell|pg||

 

Voila - happy for the result - but I don't really know if that is what we are talking about Ben.

 

Have I found new options for LIN-files or misunderstood something?

If you read andych second post you might get a grip what the problem is.

Let's say you have 2000 Lin-files on your drive, and you want to look at those files that have the name Hamman in it, then you can't find out which one to open through Windows search tool.

If you enter *.lin and the name Hamman you will get 0 hits even if there are 300 files that have the name Hamman in it.

 

Of course you can only search on *.lin, which you did, and get a couple of hits but how fun is that :).

 

I have also found this a bit annoying, especially when surfing through old vugraph files.

[csdenmark]

Of course you can only search on *.lin, which you did, and get a couple of hits but how fun is that .

 

I have also found this a bit annoying, especially when surfing through old vugraph files

Always fun to have hits LOL

 

But you are quite right - I suspected something more than just a search tool for a file.

 

I cannot see a good solution. Maybe upload the files to WEB. Then search within the domain via Google advanced search. Looks like the options are there.

 

If somebody has an address for a LIN file on WEB it ought to be easy to test.

 

---------------------------

Above looks like working. Try Google advanced search. Search for Hamway within domain bridgefiles.net. Set for search in text. You will have many hits for that. Same I think you will be able to have for LIN files. I have none uploaded so I cannot test that right now.

[Cascade]

There is a windows "feature" when searching for a file that contains particular text using the standard windows search feature that it only searches files with particular extensions and .lin is not one of them. There is a work around but unfortunately I cannot remember it.

 

Sorry I cannot be more helpful.

[uday]

As far as I can tell, there is a bug in XP that prevents it from searching some files types when you seach all files containing "blah".

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?...KB;EN-US;309173

 

It sounds like one could mess with one's windows registry and fix the problem but I don't suggest anyone try this unless they really know what they are doing (and even in that case, I wash my hands of any consequences - mess w/the registry at your own risk).

 

 

But back to the problem .

 

The real problem is that one wants to search a folder (and perhaps subfolders) for files of extension .LIN that contain certain phrases in the 'player name' field (why not the contract field, or both :) ).

 

We - bbo - don't offer any such tool at the moment. I'm sure there is a free utility somewhere that will do the trick. google finds one or two easily enough but I have not tried any of them.

[Trumpace]

XP has a command line utility, findstr.

 

open a command window. (start -> run. Type in cmd and press enter)

 

cd "C:\bridge base online"

findstr /S /I fred *.lin

 

This should do a case insensitive search for 'fred' in all the .lin files in bridge base online directory and its sub directories.

 

For the computer savvy: Findstr for XP

[csdenmark]

Looks like Google Search has the same kind of problems as those described by Uday for Windows.

 

I downloaded from the Wingrep link provided by Gerben. That looks like working.

 

I got 20 hits of strings for content inside the string named Hamman including this one which one I know have the name 32 times. C:\Bridge Base Online\hands\usafrance.lin

[DenisO]

What I like to do is searching for e.g. 'Hamman' in e.g. 100 lin files.

I use the search function from windows start menu but it returns no items found. :)

 

What you need is something like Powerdesk - a free version can be obtained at:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_desc...fid,3491,00.asp

 

I've got an old version and I just used it to search my 1975 Bermuda Bowl folder for files of type *.lin and containing text "garozzo". It worked a treat. It also gives you other attribute filters - I use it all the time for my hard disk searches.

[andych]

Thanks for the many replies.

 

Google desktop search is too bulky for me. Never have the patience to let it build the index, even in b/g :)

 

Guess windows version of grep would be in text mode in command window, like the findstr command .... not handy :lol:

 

If someone knows of a light weight GUI search tool for windows, much appreciate for a link here :lol: :lol:

 

Miss DOTW so much ..... :lol: :lol: :lol:

[andych]

Just have a look in www.wingrep.com.

Seems it does offer a GUI interface. Will try tonight. Thanks!! :) :lol: :lol:

[DenisO]

I've just checked and you can actually use the Windows XP file finder.

Start>Search>file finder. This gives different criteria to search on, including Content.

[csdenmark]

Thanks for the many replies.

 

Google desktop search is too bulky for me.  Never have the patience to let it build the index, even in b/g  :)

 

Guess windows version of grep would be in text mode in command window, like the findstr command .... not handy  :lol:

 

If someone knows of a light weight GUI search tool for windows, much appreciate for a link here :lol:  :lol:

 

Miss DOTW so much .....  :lol:  :lol:  :lol:

Google desktop search is too bulky for me. Never have the patience to let it build the index, even in b/g

Andy Google desktop search is very good. You need not to wait for index, such it generates by itself at times your computer is in stand by. In a few days your whole computer is indexed. But the advanced search by Google is for WEB only.

 

Regarding this topic Google seems not to work at all as it like Windows, Windows Explorer only search for the most standard file extensions.

[andych]

I've just checked and you can actually use the Windows XP file finder.

Start>Search>file finder. This gives different criteria to search on, including Content.

I did try that before. It doesnt work for me. Nothing found. I am unsure if windows is not searching .lin files, or it could not search 'Helgemo' or '*Helgemo*'.... :ph34r: :ph34r:

 

Does it work for anyone?

[andych]

What you want is something like this: www.wingrep.com

Tried this.

Exactly what I need.

Many thanks ..... :ph34r: :ph34r: :lol: