https://www.fileseek.ca/Discussions/RSS/?TopicID=c2513887-6c47-4808-b917-4640d4791859 FileSeek RSS: Query - false positives Mon, 06 Jul 2026 13:38:43 GMT en hourly 1 https://www.fileseek.ca/Discussions/RSS/?TopicID=c2513887-6c47-4808-b917-4640d4791859 https://www.fileseek.ca/Discussions/View/query-false-positives/?ID=c2513887-6c47-4808-b917-4640d4791859#2 Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:07:29 GMT Binary Fortress Software https://www.fileseek.ca/Discussions/View/query-false-positives/?ID=c2513887-6c47-4808-b917-4640d4791859#2 FileSeek Word documents are binary, and are not easily searchable. A "line" in a binary file could be thousands of characters long, and isn't the same as a line in a text file. Also, if any compression is used in the file (like the new Word 2007 .docx files) then you will almost never find any matches for your words. In order to correctly search these types of files, a search program would have to be able to load and parse the file. Unfortunately, FileSeek can't do this, as it would mean coding in dozens of file parsers and just isn't practical. ]]> https://www.fileseek.ca/Discussions/View/query-false-positives/?ID=c2513887-6c47-4808-b917-4640d4791859 Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:13:02 GMT Binary Fortress Software https://www.fileseek.ca/Discussions/View/query-false-positives/?ID=c2513887-6c47-4808-b917-4640d4791859 FileSeek I searched for the word 'yen' (as in Japanese Yen) and Fileseek 1.7.1 found word documents which I was not expecting.

Fileseek shows a 'Line Number' e.g. 1063, but the 'Line' shows rubbish.
At the bottom of the screen in its own window it shows a lot of rubbish but the word 'yen' is clearly seen
For example:

}{yen��2����
�IX�����hZ������c

(It hasn't pasted in exactly but you can see why it has picked up the word 'yen'.

Now that I understand what it is doing I can work around it. But I would like to know what it is finding. ]]>