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Filenames and search criteria

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by winmorgan

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I'm a Mac user who's just migrated to using
Windows as well as Mac. Two questions I
haven't been able to solve related to Windows
(2000):

1. Is there anyway to change a files name so
it appears as a straight line of text under the
icon (as one can do with a Mac)? So that a file
name would read, e.g., Name Of This Folder,
instead of (as Windows does it):
Name Of
This
Folder

2. Is there anyway to search in Windows and
keep the search specific to a character string?
If I search in Mac OS for "raw," I'll get any
filename that actually contains those three
letters (e.g., "draw," "craw," etc.). With this
same search in Windows, I get many files
appearing which don't contain "raw" at all. A
recent search for the term Paint in filenames
produced all sorts of files that didn't have Paint
in their file name. If I try searching with the
term in quotes ("paint"), it finds ONLY files with
exactly that name. So if I search for "Raw" in
Windows, I do not get "draw, craw"?I get
results ONLY if the file is exactly named
"Raw."

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

10 replies

by dklippert

1) No
2) Use Wildcards * is a substitute for zero or more characters. *.Raw* will find Draw or Drawing.
A ? is a single character. ?raw will find draw, but not redraw

by ann777

1: No, you cannot force windows to not wrap long filenames. You can however, change the file name to somthing reasonable so that it does not wrap.

2: No, again. A search for ech found 124 documents. A search for "tech" found nothing. But you can use wildcards to bring up other files. If i search for technolo*.* I will get all the files beginning with the word technolo..
You can also use question marks for placeholders... a search for ?ech*.* will also bring up all my technology files as well as xech*.* files (okay, bad example). In your example ?raw*.* would bring up draw and crawl, but it will not bring up raw*.*

It's not a perfect world. Obviously MS and Apple had to do things differently and that's the choice we make when we purchase and use different OSes. Linux, unix, Novell etc. everything has it's own command set.

by timwalsh

Question 1: Width of the icon caption box is based on default icon spacing. To change icon spacing, follow these steps: Right-click on a blank space on your desktop. Choose Properties. Click the Appearance tab in the Display Properties window. Click the down arrow in the Item box. Search for and highlight Icon Spacing (Horizontal). Adjust the number to the right upwards (you may have to play with this setting). Click Apply. Close completely out of Display Properties. Again right-clickon a blank area of your desktop. Choose Line up Icons to realign the icons to the new spacing. NOTE: this setting is universal for all icons on the desktop and cannot be set on a by-icon basis. It is based solely on the set default icon spacing, not on the actual spacing if you manually move icons.

Question 2: Attempted to recreate this problem using your example, but couldn't. The only thing I can think of is that you may have entered your search criteria in the box labeled "Containingtext:" in stead of the one labeled "Search for files and folders named:". When I tried this, I got results similar to yours (lots of hits, but no files with the search criteria in the filename).
(continued)

by timwalsh

NOTE: Reference the use of wildcards in search criteria (in Windows 2000): Using the "*" may give you unexpected results. Since you have already told the computer you are searching for a file or folder, adding ".*" after your search criteria (to indicate any file extension) is redundant and not needed. If you add the "*" at either the beginning or end of the search string, you will get results either starting with the search string and any number of characters following it or ending with thesearch string with any number of characters preceding it (i.e. "raw*" will get you rawhide but not draw; "*raw" will get you draw but not drawing. To find any name that includes your search string in any position, either include the "*" at both ends of the string, or don't include any "*".

by ann777

*.raw* will not find draw or drawing. it will only find files ending with the extension of "raw" and anything after it. I posted an answer to this question earlier and it somehow disappeared. At any rate...

1) No. You can rename files/iconssuch that they fit on one line, but you cannot disable the line wrap of files/icons.

2) The answer is also No

? = a one character placeholder
* = a wildcard

*raw.* = will pickup absolutely all fines on your pc clone, because the wildcard before the text is the only thing seen. Essentially *raw.* = *.*

?raw*.* = will pickup draw and craw, etc. but it won't pickup raw alone.

These are limitations of OSes. Apple and Microsoft had different ideas about how searching of files could be done. Unix has a different way as well.

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