• Home
• Features
• Download
• Donate
• Screenshot
• FAQ
• Contact

Home > FAQ

FAQ

• Is PHiSearch really free?

  Yes, it's absolutely free for anyone.

• There are other text search utilities. What is unique about PHiSearch?

  PHiSearch has a very simple UI to help the user to get the task done, i.e. to search a text in files. It has the latest UI with support for Windows 7 and Aero. And it's really fast. PHiSearch is still in its nascent stage and there are lots of features coming up.

• How fast is PHiSearch?

  The speed depends on lots of factors like number of processor cores, speed of the hard disk, total physical memory and the size of the files to search. On my laptop with Core 2 Duo 2.20Ghz, 4GB RAM, 250GB 7200RPM SATA HDD and Windows 7 OS, it takes 50-65 secs the first time to search for the word "testing" in a folder of 11900 files and 1.20 GB and takes 4-5 secs the second time.

• Why is it slow in searching for the first time?

  When a file is opened in Windows, it reads directly from the hard disk and then caches it in memory so that the next time the same file is requested for open, Windows can retrieve it from memory. Reading from memory is very fast when compared reading from hard disk. That's the reason why the second search is faster.

• What can be done to improve the speed of the first search?

  If you know the file types to search, specify it in "Include masks" (e.g. if you want to search all .cs files, specify "*.cs") or if you want to search all text files but like to exclude few files types, specify it in "Exclude masks". Another way is to specify the valid and invalid file extensions in Settings -> File Extensions. PHiSearch uses this to skip analyzing the file contents to figure out whether its a text file or binary file.

• Then why not call it Text and Binary File Extensions instead of Valid and Invalid File Extensions?

  So that the Invalid file extensions list can be used to exclude certain type of text files like .map and .rtf. Generally these files will be huge and doesn't have much use coming up in the search result.

• Does PHiSearch support automatic updates?

  Yes, it will notify you when a new release is available. The green arrow in the top-right corner will blink when a new release is avaiable.

• Why is PHiSearch trying to access http://www.phisearch.net?

  Because it is checking whether a new release is available.

• Are there any limitation for PHiSearch?

  • Does not support path with more than 260 characters.
  • The file previewer loads the entire file into memory and this causes problems when loading a large text file.
  • Does not support versions of Windows lower than XP.

• Why is Windows 98, Windows ME and Windows 2000 not supported?

  Because .NET Framework 4.0 does not support these operating systems.