Is there a reason you're wanting to use RegEx instead of Text Query for a search like that? Usually when searching for just a word, you'd use Text Query, RegEx is intended for more complex pattern matching.

To answer your initial question though, I'm not sure why it's not working when setting it to RegEx on your machine. If I do a similar search on mine, I get the same results as when using Text Query.

Nov 18, 2019  • #2

I wanted to use the simplest regex I could think of, that's all. I've tried others and have never gotten any matches.

Nov 18, 2019  • #3

Ah ok, gotcha! It is strange that it's not working. If you put some text in a new text file and try a simple regex on that one, does it return any results?

Nov 19, 2019  • #4

No luck, searching a simple text file with the above regex yields the same results.
This is happening on at least 2 of the PCs I use, so it's not weirdness associated with 1 machine.

Nov 19, 2019  • #5

Does it make any difference if "Process file contents using file handlers" is enabled or disabled when you're doing the search?

Nov 19, 2019  • #6

No difference.
I'm not missing something simple like quotes around the regex or something, am I?
How about posting a screen shot of a working regex search? I might see something obvious

Nov 19, 2019  • #7

You're not missing anything that I can see. I've attached two screenshots below of the Search and Advanced tabs from my simple regex search.

Could you try yours again and send me screenshots of the Search and Advanced tab?

• Attachment: RegexAdvancedTab.png [48,722 bytes]

• Attachment: RegexSearchTab.png [44,911 bytes]

Nov 20, 2019  • #8

Here are the screen shots

• Attachment: Advanced tab.jpg [190,220 bytes]

• Attachment: Query is RegEx.jpg [198,329 bytes]

• Attachment: Query is text query.jpg [221,646 bytes]

Nov 21, 2019  • #9

Could you attach the sample file you used for those screenshots? Maybe there's something strange with the encoding that I'm not seeing here with my test files.

Nov 22, 2019  • #10

You bet

• Attachment [protected]: fileseek regext test.txt [42 bytes]

Nov 22, 2019  • #11

Ok, I'm absolutely stumped on this. Even with this file, I still get results when doing a regex query. Let me sleep on this over the weekend and hopefully I'll have another idea on Monday.

Nov 23, 2019  • #12

Any epiphanies yet, Keith?

Nov 27, 2019  • #13

Nope! I'm waiting for some feedback from our devs, I'll let you know when I hear back

Nov 27, 2019  • #14

Could you send us a debug log for this regex issue?

• On the FileSeek Settings > Troubleshooting tab, change the Logging drop-down to "L1: Log Minimal" and click Apply
• Try the regex search
• Click the "Export Info to File" button on the Settings > Troubleshooting tab
• Reply with the file attached
• Disable debug logging after sending the log

Thanks!

Nov 27, 2019  • #15

OK, here's the debug log

• Attachment [protected]: FileSeekDebugInfo.zip [59,034 bytes]

Dec 3, 2019  • #16

Ok, we might have something here. Do you have the "Treat query text as one large query term" option enabled in Tools > Settings > Search? If so, could you try disabling that and then see if the regex queries work?

Dec 6, 2019  • #17

Bazinga! That seems to do it, at least for a plain string search.
Is this a bug that needs to be fixed? Or a limitation in the app?

Dec 6, 2019  • #18

Not totally a bug, but definitely something we can improve. When that setting is enabled, it wraps the Query text in quotes. We'll just need to make it so that the setting is ignored if the mode is set to regex

Dec 6, 2019  • #19

So I've found 3 issues - blank tabs, scrambled buttons, and this one. Do you guys have any sort of "bug bounty"?

Dec 8, 2019  • #20

We don't have a bug bounty program, no. We do appreciate the bug reports though!

Dec 9, 2019  • #21

This issue should be all fixed up in FileSeek 6.3 as well

Thanks!

Jan 8, 2020  • #22