File search with hyphen (-)

[cmacminn]

File search seems not to understand the hyphen (-) as a normal character. For example, I have thousands of files with names like "lubbers-prl-2014.pdf" and "lovoll-pre-2004.pdf". A file search for "prl" or "pre" will find them, along with lots of other things, but a file search for "-prl-" or "-pre-" will not.

 

I think this used to work, but the behavior seems to have changed. How can I change this back? There may just be a relevant setting hiding somewhere...

[Andrew]

File search seems not to understand the hyphen (-) as a normal character. For example, I have thousands of files with names like "lubbers-prl-2014.pdf" and "lovoll-pre-2004.pdf". A file search for "prl" or "pre" will find them, along with lots of other things, but a file search for "-prl-" or "-pre-" will not.

 

I think this used to work, but the behavior seems to have changed. How can I change this back? There may just be a relevant setting hiding somewhere...

 

 

If this has worded in the past, it would have been a behavioural change in the way the OS X treats words when doing a metadata query which may have broken this.

 

Try searching for *pre- in Alfred, this should wildcard the start of the word.

 

Cheers,

Andrew