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Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

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Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#41

Post by kevindqc »

degenerate wrote: post #38
misterdata wrote: post #3

For those of us on Windows: Everything [1] does the job quite nicely with much less verbose syntax. [1] http://voidtools.com

I've been using this for years and it is LIGHTNING fast. No need to "index" all the files because it reads directly from the MFT. If you create a new file matching the search pattern it's already sitting in the results window by the time you alt-tab. Also, the "directory size" equivalent of Everything is WizTree [1] ... much faster than WinDirStat, which I see recommended way too often. [1] http://antibody-software.c…

Are you sure it doesn't index anything? There is even a section in the settings called Indexes.

Also when you launch it first, it's going to be empty and says it's scanning your folders and it takes a little bit until you see something.

I think it is still indexing (maybe using the MFT instead of recursively listing files and directories), it's just a lot better than Windows search indexing. And it might use this [1] to keep up to date? It's mentioned in the settings

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USN_Journal

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#42

Post by jazoom »

misterdata wrote: post #3

For those of us on Windows: Everything [1] does the job quite nicely with much less verbose syntax. [1] http://voidtools.com

I'd really like to know why Microsoft can't do something like this in Windows itself. Everything is very useful.

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#43

Post by agumonkey »

CaseFlatline wrote: post #34

Don't see it offhand so asking: 1) How/where are you storing the index 2) Have you tried this on large (30+ TB filesystems)?

even without an index, having a way to project declaratively instead of relying on cut/sed is giving me hot flashes.

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#44

Post by fnj »

labster wrote: post #37
dTal wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame Bash used 'select' as an elaborate menu built-in - it'd be quite neat to name the binary that (and drop the quotes). The you could just type the query right into your prompt!

Just use the fish shell instead, and you can avoid the years of shell cruft of bash, or the endless customization of zsh. Bash is a good environment for shell scripting, but not really the best for user interaction. Although perl is probably the best environment for shell scripting.

Xonsh is far better both interactively and for scripting than bash, fish, zsh, or perl.

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#45

Post by jonas21 »

jazoom wrote: post #42
misterdata wrote: post #3

For those of us on Windows: Everything [1] does the job quite nicely with much less verbose syntax. [1] http://voidtools.com

I'd really like to know why Microsoft can't do something like this in Windows itself. Everything is very useful.

Isn't that what they tried to do with WinFS?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#47

Post by kshvmdn »

_jal wrote: post #15
devnonymous wrote: post #7

Nice project, wish you the best ! Although tbh, I personally won't use this simply because I know enough of find(1) to not see the cognitive overhead of switching to sql to do filesystem /queries/. Any examples where this would be better than using find (with the occasional filter thrown in) ?

Subselects would be a pretty awesome feature. "select name from foo where name not in (select name from ../bar where date I'm usually fine with `find`, but when doing things more interesting than just "find files in this directory that are not in that directory", while uncommon, tend to make me think about my pipeline a bit.

Great idea! Got the issue up [0], feel free to add to it if you'd like.

[0] https://github.com/kshvmdn/fsql/issues/4

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#48

Post by degenerate »

kevindqc wrote: post #41
degenerate wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using this for years and it is LIGHTNING fast. No need to "index" all the files because it reads directly from the MFT. If you create a new file matching the search pattern it's already sitting in the results window by the time you alt-tab. Also, the "directory size" equivalent of Everything is WizTree [1] ... much faster than WinDirStat, which I see recommended way too often. [1] http://antibody-software.c…

Are you sure it doesn't index anything? There is even a section in the settings called Indexes. Also when you launch it first, it's going to be empty and says it's scanning your folders and it takes a little bit until you see something. I think it is still indexing (maybe using the MFT instead of recursively listing files and directories), it's just a lot better than Windows search indexing. And it might use this [1]…

No I'm not sure. Maybe it builds a rudimentary index... but give it a shot yourself and see. 15 seconds after installing, you can search your entire system instantly. It's crazy whatever it is doing.

And yes I do believe it uses the USN Journal to stay up to date.

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#49

Post by jazoom »

jonas21 wrote: post #45
jazoom wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really like to know why Microsoft can't do something like this in Windows itself. Everything is very useful.

Isn't that what they tried to do with WinFS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

I don't know their reasons for WinFS, but I do know that Everything's authors figured out a long time ago how to get great search with Windows' current FS.

Re: Show HN: FSQL – Search through your file system with SQL-esque queries

#50

Post by kevindqc »

degenerate wrote: post #48
kevindqc wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure it doesn't index anything? There is even a section in the settings called Indexes. Also when you launch it first, it's going to be empty and says it's scanning your folders and it takes a little bit until you see something. I think it is still indexing (maybe using the MFT instead of recursively listing files and directories), it's just a lot better than Windows search indexing. And it might use this [1]…

No I'm not sure. Maybe it builds a rudimentary index... but give it a shot yourself and see. 15 seconds after installing, you can search your entire system instantly. It's crazy whatever it is doing. And yes I do believe it uses the USN Journal to stay up to date.

There's actually a wikipedia page, and it explains how it works. As we suspected, it uses the MFT for initial indexing and change journal for updates.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_(software)

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