Dash search won't return results when typing the exact name of an app containing a capital letter inside it

[mist]

I have several versions of netbeans installed in Ubuntu 12.04. When I open the dash and type "Net", Netbeans 7.1 is the first search result under applications. However, when I proceed to type "NetB" , "netb", or "Netb" the result disappears. It seems that the application is registered as "Net Beans". If I type "Net Beans" with a space it works fine. Normally I would assume that this is a problem with the given application, however, in the dash, the application is displayed as "NetBeans IDE 7.1". I would think that if I type in that exact name, it should appear in the search results, but it doesn't.

In Summary:
Netbeans IDE is labled "NetBeans IDE 7.1" in the dash, but typing "NetBeans" into the dash will not display netbeans while typing "Net Beans" will. This is quite confusing and not intuitive. If dash lables a program as xxx typing xxx should result in the program being matching in the search results.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Stéphane Guillou (stephane-guillou)]

I confirm this with another example: MusicBrainz Picard.
In the dash and the launcher, it is displayed as "MusicBrainz Picard".
If I search in the dash for "music" or "music b*", I can see its icon, but if I search for "musicb*" or "musicB*", it doesn't appear.

I think the problem is the capital letter of the second word when there is no space between them, because I can reproduce it with
- MusicBrainz Picard
- AisleRiot Patience
- FreeCell Patience
- IcedTea Web Control Panel
- PureData
- Transmission BitTorrent Client

However, I don't have this problem with:
- ImageShack Uploader.
- MyPaint
- MyUnity
- LibreOffice
- RecordMyDesktop
- QjackCtl

Any idea what could this come from?

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

seems not to be the case for me.

[Federico Tello Gentile (federicotg)]

It is the capital letter in the middle. The reason it works with openoffice is because the command to start it includes the word openoffice without the capital letter.

My guess is unity is splitting the words when it finds a capital letter, so it indexes "net" and "beans" but not "netbeans". As the command to start netbeans is not something like /usr/bin/netbeans it is not indexed there either.

There's a workaround: edit the desktop file and either change the app name to "Netbeans" or add the word "netbeans" in the comment. Here's how.

sudo gedit /usr/share/applications/netbeans-7.2.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=NetBeans IDE 7.2
Comment=The Smarter Way to Code netbeans
Exec=/bin/sh "/usr/local/netbeans-7.2/bin/netbeans"
Icon=/usr/local/netbeans-7.2/nb/netbeans.png
Categories=Application;Development;Java;IDE
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Terminal=0

[Aaron Gerber (agerber85)]

Of course this is subjective, but it seems to me that a modern search engine in this context should ignore spaces, anyways. Even if Unity weren't errantly splitting the names, it would seem common enough that a user wouldn't know whether to include or exclude a space in a compound-word application name.

[Bernie Zemke (ber-zem)]

A beginner here so forgive me if I do something wrong.

When I go to the dash and type in "freecell" what I want won't come up. If I type "free cell" the Freecell Solitaire game will show up which is what I wanted.

The people on Ubuntu Forum helped me and asked if I would do a bug report. The thread is called "move application to folder".

Thank You, Bernie

[Stéphane Guillou (stephane-guillou)]

Please keep in mind that this bug is a duplicate of bug #1056743. You should comment on it. Thank you!