psearch.py

psearch.py is probably the smallest and the fastest search engine. I got tired of sluggish search programs overbloated with unnecessary stuff, and I wrote in Python my own program which does nothing more or less than searching for the directories and files. It takes only 3 seconds on my Windows XP box for psearch.py to look through the all 94 983 files on my Disk C and find what I need. You don't need to know the exact name of the item you are looking for, psearch.py accepts the part of the name you remember and outputs the full paths containing the pattern you entered. The output is saved in the file psearch.log into the current directory you are working in. Note: psearch.py's search is case sensitive. It means that Program Files and program files are not the same. Most likely you won't find anything in the latter case.

psearch.py runs on Windows and Linux, and supposedly on other platforms but was not tested. In order to use psearch.py you will need a Python interpreter. On some OSs Python is already preinstalled, but if you are a Windows user, you will have to download and install it separately.

How to Use psearch.py

psearch.py is a command line tool. Open your terminal and enter the path to the psearch.py executable. If you are a Windows user, Go Start --> Run --> enter CMD in the box --> and press OK. Or simply double click on the file. When the DOS prompt pops up, change the directory to the one containing psearch.py file and hit Enter. The matches are printed on the screen and saved into the psearch.log file

When the search is done, you can view the psearch.log file by entering psearch.log in the command line. It will be opened in Notepad. This way you can do a lot of operations on files right in CMD. For example, you can delete a file with the command del "path". The path was saved in the psearch.log file. Note, if you do copy&paste from Notepad to CMD, don't forget to surround your path with quotes, if it contains blank spaces in the names of directories and files. For more tricks which can be performed on paths in CMD, you will have to google a bit.

psearch.py is not freeware, it is a fully functional shareware. It costs $1. If you tried psearch.py and found it useful and wanted to keep it, click on the PayPal button to express your appreciation to the author who created such a wonderful piece of software. You are free to modify the code to adjust it to your personal tastes, but I mind if your modification will be used for commercial purposes later on.