Close
dtSearch Text Retrieval Engine Programmer's Reference
Filename Filters

A filename filter is a pattern, like *.*, *.DOC, or FILE??10.DAT, that you can use to tell dtSearch which files you want it to search or index in a directory.

A filename filter is a pattern, like *.*, *.DOC, or FILE??10.DAT, that you can use to tell dtSearch which files you want it to search or index in a directory. For example, if you have a directory of word processing files, and want to search all of the files beginning with SMITH and having the extension DOC, you would use the filter SMITH*.DOC. 

A "?" matches any single character, so SMITH?.DOC would match SMITH1.DOC, but not SMITH123.DOC. An asterisk ("*") in a file name filter matches any number of characters, so SMITH*.DOC would match SMITH001.DOC, SMITHAAA.DOC, etc. 

"Exclude" filters work the same as ordinary filters. They just specify files that you do not want to include. 

If a filename filter contains a \ or / character, it is matched against the entire name of the document, including the folder it is in. For example, the filter "*\Example\*" would match any file in a folder named "Example".

ZIP Archives

Inside ZIP archives, exclude filters apply in the same way that they apply to other files. For example, if you exclude *.XLS, then sample.xls inside sample.zip would be skipped. 

Include filters only apply inside a ZIP archive if they have a special format that indicates that they are supposed to apply to zipped files. Otherwise, all files inside a ZIP are assumed to be included. The format for include filters inside a ZIP is: 

*.ZIP>*.DOC *.ZIP>*.XLS *.ZIP>*.PDF 

This filter would include only files named *.DOC, *.XLS, and *.PDF that are inside a ZIP archive. To specify that items inside nested ZIP archives should also be indexed, the include filter would be: 

*.ZIP>*.DOC *.ZIP>*.XLS *.ZIP>*.PDF *.ZIP>*.ZIP