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Paul Jurczak
Asked: 2020-06-13 18:31:36 +0800 CST

Query syntax of file search in GNOME Files (Nautilus)

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Firstly, where is the official documentation of GNOME Files (Nautilus)? I found only very terse version here.

When playing with Files 3.26.4 on Ubuntu 18.04.4, I noticed an odd behavior. Here is a search with docker query:

enter image description here

The same directory searched with do?ker:

enter image description here

Again, the same directory searched with *do?ker:

enter image description here

Why the last two searches fail to find The Docker Book ***.pdf?

I don't have tracker installed, as in the output of apt policy tracker I find

tracker:
  Installed: (none)

EDIT

I found Select files by pattern page on Gnome Help, but behavior shown above is not consistent with description there. Maybe Nautilus search can't handle * in the file name.

gnome nautilus search

2 Answers

  1. Following certainly is not a definitive answer. As you say, anything related to files and especially tracker is extremely obscure. However, it may help provide some insight. "Documentation" is installed with the Help function in your system. The section "Files, folders & search" informs about the use of Gnome Files.

    Search syntax in Gnome Files without tracker enabled is dead simple. There are no wild cards. For file name searches, it will search for all strings you supply. Thus, "docker action" or "action docker" will find "Docker in action.pdf". That, at least, is how it currently works in 20.04. It is quite possible that in 18.04, you only can specify words in the order as they appear in the file name, i.e., "docker action" to find the file.

    With tracker enabled, nautilus passes its search query to tracker. Tracker works based on strings extracted from file names and of file contents. It does handle wildcards. ? represents a single character and * represents multiple characters. It will return results when a string occurs within the file name or file contents, and it uses an and logic: only items containing all strings provided are returned.

    d*s for example, will pick up any file with d[one or multiple characters]s in the file name or in the file's content, e.g. Downloads", "Documents", ...

    d?s will pick upfiles with d[any single character]s somewhere in the file name, e.g. '**D**e**s**ktop', Project description.txt`.

    20.04 will also pick up The Docker Book ***.pdf. in your last query. 18.04 does not. Be aware that it may take time before a file eventually is taken op and retrieved in a tracker search.

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  2. I've run the same test on minimal installation of Ubuntu 20.04 with default settings, which enables Tracker. All 3 queries return 3 Docker titles as expected with search options set to Anything and File Name.

    When I install Tracker on Ubuntu 18.04.4, file search in Nautilus becomes even more bizarre: do?ker and *do?ker don't find any of 3 Docker titles, but they find files like docker test.txt.

    In conclusion, there is a bug in Gnome Files 3.26.4, which was fixed in the later versions.

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