Search won’t succeed if query is surrounded by hyphens in file name

[ryzor]

Hi there, 

 

I noticed many of my files weren't coming up in search, and it was bothering me for the longest time. I finally decided to spend some time to troubleshoot and narrow down the issue. I've concluded it has something to do with hyphens. Doesn't seem to happen with periods or underscores. However, most of my file nomenclature across my machine utilizes hyphens in this way.

 

When I'm trying to find a file based on a section of its name, it won't come up in Alfred's search results if that section happens to be sandwiched between two other file name sections. In other words, surrounded by a hyphen on each side.

 

Below are two screenshots that should be able to show what I'm talking about. Each screenshot should show three results.

 

Any idea what might be causing this? Fixing this would be a life saver.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

 

 

 

 

[deanishe]

43 minutes ago, ryzor said:

Any idea what might be causing this? Fixing this would be a life saver.

 

Apple changed way the metadata search engine interprets hyphens. @Andrew might be able to give you some details.

 

I think you can work around it with asterisks (i.e. *DummyWord*), but that’s a pain

[Vero]

@ryzor Could you please provide more details as to which version of macOS and Alfred you're using?

 

I've just replicated your exact file names in Big Sur, and words are always found after a hyphen. As such, I'm wondering if you're either on an older OS (where Apple have set different specifications for their word boundary based search), or having indexing issues of some sort.

 

Having said that, it looks like you've either added jpgs to your default results, or turned on unintelligent search, which isn't optimal and is likely going to return a whole lot more results in your Default Results than is ideal.

 

You can pop your Diagnostics file (type "?diagnostics" into Alfred to get it) to our info@ address if you'd like me to take a look at that.

 

Cheers,
Vero

[ryzor]

Thanks for the replies @deanishe and @Vero. Happy to use `*DummyWord` until we can figure out a long term solution.

 

For other software-/work-related reasons, I'm unable to upgrade to Big Sur just yet.

 

I'm on MacOS Catalina Version 10.15.7 (19H524). Will be sending you the diagnostics file asap.

 

A long time ago I did turn on unintelligent search for a reason I can't quite remember. I think there was a file type I often use that wasn't showing up on search.

 

Thanks again!

ryzor

 

 

[Vero]

@ryzor Thanks for sending your diagnostics across.

 

I've checked on our Catalina Mac, and get the same behaviour as I do on Big Sur; Using the same file names you used, the hyphen word boundary is fine and files with those names are found. (The results are the same if I enable unintelligent search) I also wondered if you might've been using some odd unicode character that looks like a hyphen, but macOS also doesn't seem to take issue with those.

 

 

To start troubleshooting this, I would encourage you to first disable unintelligent search, as there are better ways to add a few specific files to your default results instead of bringing all files in.   Try using the File Search by prefixing your search term with a space (which is a shortcut for the "open" keyword and broadens your search.

 

Does this return the file you expect or not?

 

Let me know how you get on.

 

Cheers,
Vero

 

[ryzor]

Hi @Vero,

 

Thanks for taking a look! Did those steps, with following same results for now. Also restarted Alfred. Happy to have you lead me through the next troubleshooting steps.

 

ryzor

 

 

 

 

[ryzor]

Hi @Vero, I was wondering if you might have any thoughts on how to best troubleshoot it from here? Thanks very much!

 

ryzor

[jpage4500]

This post hasn't been updated in a long time but I'm also having a similar issue and not having any luck trying to get it fixed.

 

Has anyone figured out any workarounds or if anyone from Alfred team has identified this as an issue to be fixed

[Vero]

@ryzor @jpage4500 It looks like Apple has re-adjusted the hyphen behaviour in Monterey, and for some other scenarios they did this earlier in Big Sur.

 

We've been investigating for the benefit of this thread and another related thread, and it's all working as expected on both Big Sur and Monterey:

 

These changes on Apple's part should help anyone experiencing the issue described earlier in this thread  As it looks like it's all resolved in current macOS versions, I'll close this thread, but let us know if your observations differ.

 

Cheers,
Vero