File search engine is inconsistent

[François Tissandier]

The file/folder search engine in Unity find some folders, but not some others.
Also, it displays some text containing the word, but not the folder containing this file whose name is also containing the word.
So I don't understand how it select some files, and not some others.

[Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen (kamstrup)]

Can you be a bit more specific as to what confuses you? Fx. with a concrete example.

[François Tissandier (baloo)]

Sorry if it's not clear

For instance: I have folders on my desktop. If I type the name of one of them in the search engine, no answer. However, if I type the name of a file located on the desktop, it works !

So I thought maybe folders are not displayed in the answers. But by trying other searches, I found a few folders in my home folder (example: "Perso"). But not some others (like "softwares")... Hard to understand why so far !

Then I tried for files, and it's the same problem : I can find some files, but not some others. Is there a maximum size for a file to be indexed ? And I'm not even searching in the content, just the file name. And I'm using the beginning of the file name, not a part of it.

[François Tissandier (baloo)]

By the way, it's a Natty upgraded from Maverick, not a fresh install.

[AndreK (andre-k)]

same here, it finds stuff in some folders under my home folder, not others.
like ~/Documents may work
and ~/Scan does not.
nor will it won't find the folder named scan.
but after I manually go to the folder, and edit some files inside, it displays these files when I search for "scan"
it's close to useless, unreliable.
I experience this on all 4 computers (laptop+workstation at both home and work)

[Sean Fitzpatrick (sean-fitzpatrick)]

As far as I can tell, the search bar in the Files place only locates recent documents. I did a clean install of 11.04 but kept my files intact (separate /home partition). Anything under Recent Documents shows up when I search, but nothing else does. For a particularly silly example, if I click on the Files & Folders button, it shows me Recent, Downloads, and Favourite Folders. In the Downloads section is a file called poster.tex. If I type 'poster' into the search bar, I get 'Your search did not match any files'.

[Harry van Haaren (harryhaaren)]

Can't reproduce this bug here guys, search working fine.
Can you give me an example of two folders, and two files, where one is found and the other is not?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Matthew Paul Thomas (mpt)]

Just for the record, that the search doesn't search the contents of files is bug 792646, and that it doesn't even search the names of all files is bug 646724.