Frequently Asked Questions

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Hurricane FAQ

Click on the categories or questions below to go to the details section. If there is a question that you feel belongs on the FAQ list below, please email it to us and we will review it for addition to the list.

Features

Hurricane Search Standard offers many new features to save time and reduce tedius searching for text strings. Hurricane Search Professional expands the search functionality to include pdf, doc, and binary files. A complete list of features for both editions is available on our feature comparison page

In the Hurricane Search options dialog, choose the "Options" tab. Set the "Number of lines to preview:" to the number of lines you want to preview. In general, Hurricane Search loads the preview file very quickly, so setting this to 1000 will still result in a very fast preview. If you are previewing files on a slow drive (Network, CD, etc.), you may want to make the number of lines previewed smaller.

What is the Projects feature, and how is it different from the history feature in Standard Edition?

In Hurricane Search, the Project feature allows you to save your directory, file mask, and other search criteria so that you can quickly recall any Project search without having to find and reapply the settings individually.

Hurricane Search history only tracks individual values from each field, so it would be necessary for you to recall and select the search criteria for each field on the interface that is relevant to your search.

Example: You are searching all files and sudirectories in the Widgets folder, using the JBuilder File Mask, require case match and search for the string "Hardware Store". If this is a repeatable search, you may save at least 5 clicks and 14 keystrokes by using the Project function, which will store and recall your selections, allowing you to search for matches and get back to making code revisions quickly.

When invoking Hurricane Search, the last project used will be displayed with the settings preserved.

When Hurricane Search is executed with the /DIR= command line arguement, Hurricane Search selects a project which has that in its properties.

When Hurricane Search is executed with the /DIR= command line arguement, but is not in any project's properties, the Default project is used.

If more than one project exists with the path arguement, the most recently used project will be displayed.

IDE / Editor Integration

Hurricane Search can itegrate with any of the following editors and IDE's:

• Borland Delphi (all versions)
• Codewright (all versions)
• MultiEdit (all versions)
• Microsoft Visual Studio (version 4+)
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
• Microsoft Visual C++ 6
• Borland C++ 5
• Borland C++ Builder (all versions)
• Borland JBuilder (versions 3, 5, 6)
• UltraEdit (all versions)
• TextPad 4 (all versions)
• CodeWarrior 7
• SlickEdit (all versions)
• Hurricane Editor (all versions)

To launch your preferred Editor or IDE:

1. Access the Options Dialog (F-10 or View/Options)
2. Select the IDE/Editor tab
3. Double click on the IDE/Editor you want to open with the specified file type (TextPad for instance). This will open the "Configure Application" dialog.
4. Add the file mask(s) you wish to associate with this application (ie: *.sql; *.htm) to the list of supported file types on the Application Tab.

Some WinGREP users experience a problem when attempting to synchronize with a Delphi IDE. The symptoms are Delphi will always launch and never position to the line number of the match. Follow these steps to solve the problem:

1) From the "View" menu select "Options..."
2) Select the "IDE/Editor" tab
3) Change the "List Filter" from "Installed" to "All"
3) Double-click on the first item in the list with "Delphi" in the description.
4) From the "Configure Application" dialog, find the "File Types" field on the "Application" tab.
5) Add a semi-colon between "*.dpr" and "*.pas" so that it looks like "*.dpr;*.pas..."
6) Press "Ok" to accept the changes to the IDE
7) Repeat steps 3-6 for each item in the list with "Delphi" in the name
8) Press "Ok" to accept the changes to the IDE/Editor list

Monthly Tech Tips

Hurricane Search is a great tool for finding text in a variety of formats. With default settings, Hurricane Search finds visible text in a variety of document types. However, if you require faster searching for Word documents, or need to find hidden occurences of text, you can "fine tune" Hurricane Search to place emphasis on speed or file types.

Some file formats (Word for example) may include standard ASCII and/or Unicode text which may be hidden within documents. To locate instances of hidden text and improve speed when searching Word documents, you may disable the Word filter default setting. The Word filter extracts visible text from a word document and allows you to search that text. This results in a "friendly" type of search and works well for general purpose searching in Word documents. However, the Word filter can miss hidden occurences of search text.

To turn off Word filtering, access the Options dialog from the View drop-down menu or by using the F-10 key. Select the "File Types" tab in the Options dialog and un-check the "Search Word Files" option. With this option off, Hurricane Search will perform a full binary search on your Word Documents. This will disable the Word filter and improve the speed of your searches significantly.

If you have archived files, the "Search zips files" option must remain enabled to allow searching documents contained in archives. If you do not wish to to search archive files, you may want to un-check this option to improve search speed.

When conducting a binary search for text which is not visible within a document, the Hurricane Search regular expressions feature will allow you to use powerful expression syntax. For example, if we wanted to find hidden or non-visible instances of the word Account in our documents, we would select the "Regular Expressions" search type and enter the search expression "Account|A.c.c.o.u.n.t" in the "Search For:" field (without the double quotes). This expression tells Hurricane Search to search for the word Account in regular ASCII text as well as finding the text in embedded Unicode.

Using this advanced searching technique, you can be sure to find every instance of your search text. With all of the power and flexibility available to scan multiple directories in one search, Hurricane Search makes short work of complex real-time searches. Try it for yourself and see how fast and easy it is!

Searching Multiple Directories in Hurricane

Multiple directory searching is a powerful and flexible feature. By taking advantage of the directory searching feature, WinGREP/Hurricane Search users can breeze through root- and sub-directories to find the information you need.

WinGREP/Hurricane Search offers three ways to choose directories to search. In addition, Professional edition users have the ability to ignore selected directories.

"Search in Sub Dirs" Option

Choose a single top-level (or search root) directory and select the "Search in Sub Dirs" option at the lower the right of the search wizard. This option indicates that WinGREP should search any subdirectories that it finds in the process of searching files. This option is a recursive process, so it will also search in subdirectories of subdirectories, and so on until there are no subdirectories left to search. While this sounds like a lot of work, in most cases, WinGREP is able to do this in fractions of a second! Try a subdir search on your favorite directory and see how easy and fast it is.

"Multiple Directories" Dialog

For the more complex searches involving more than one top-level directory with a single search, simply select the fly-out button (this button looks like an arrow pointing to the right) to the right of the Directory combo box and choose the "Multiple Directories..." menu item.

When selected, an Explorer-like interface will allow you to choose any number of individual directories that you wish. After you choose "OK" to save the list, you will see that the Directory combo box now contains all of the directories that you selected, separated with semicolons.

Advanced use of the "Multiple Directories" Dialog The Multiple Directories combo box allows free-form editing of any directory path that you desire. If you wish to enter multiple directories, you may easily provide the list of directories, separated with semicolons. You may also cut-and-paste text from the Clipboard. Manual entry of a long path is rarely advised, although in some cases it may well be the most efficient method available. Remember that once you have selected multiple directories, either via the dialog or by direct entry, the selection will be saved in your history list and you can recall it at any time by selecting it from the dropdown list.

Exclude Directories

In many environments, situations arise in which you need to search some subdirectories, but do NOT want to search others. WinGREP 4 Professional has a new feature called "Excludes" designed just for this case. Using an Excludes List, you can avoid searching in specific subdirectories or files. Simply click the fly-out button (looks like an error pointing right) to the right of the "Use Exclude List" option to edit the Excludes List. In the Exclude list, you can select directories (such as C:\TEMP), subdirectories (such as *\CVS\), or files (such as *.tmp). When WinGREP 4 encounters one of these Excludes during a search, a new "Skipped files..." entry will be logged indicating why the directory or file was skipped.

Excludes are not saved on a project-by-project basis.

With all of the power and flexibility available to scan multiple directories with one search, WinGREP 4 makes short work of complex real-time searches. Try it for yourself and see how fast and easy it really is and you'll be searching like a pro in no time!

A few times each week, we get questions about the name of our powerful search tool. Why was it opriginally called WinGREP (now named Hurricane Search)?

GREP was originally a tool available on UNIX platforms allowing you to search for text. You could customize searches using a complex array of command line switches. GREP would use Regular Expression syntax to help you find very specific pieces of text embedded in a text file, with output simply redirected to the screen. Then along came Windows with GUI interfaces. Many GREP-like utilities have been created for the windows environment, but most of these utilities don't take advantage of the rich user interface features available in a Windowing system. This is where WinGREP comes in.

Hurricane Search has a powerful interface that does away with the need for command line GREP utilities. It contains the features that you have come to expect in quality professional software: look-and-feel customization, easy to use user interface to help minimize your typing, integrated on-line help, and seamless integration into your working environments.

Hurricane Search references the old Unix GREP in its name because it all started there. While technology has changed, the needs we have to find information have become more complex, and the need for integration of our tools has deepened significantly. Hurricane Software is committed to providing quality tools that help you become more productive, while integrating smoothly with your other key software.

Project Management is a new feature for WinGREP 4, offering greater convenience and efficiency. Simply put, Projects retains your search settings for repeated use. Try creating a project or two for practice while learning how to use the new feature. This will help to get you accustomed to using projects in a productive way. Enjoy and be productive!

Projects Functionality

Users may search a set of files or documents for a documentation project, finding all matches on a single word or string. A user might want to retain the file mask and type for a specific set of files, but change the string searched. Or, perhaps you are searching for the same string or regular expression, but want to look in a different set of directories. The Projects Function allows simple, easy access to repeat search criteria.

Create a new project by choosing the Projects "Flyout" (the right-arrow button to the right of the projects drop-down). To edit a project, simply select the project, change the search directory, search options, or file types. WinGREP will continue to remember these settings each time the project is selected.

Software Development Functionality

Very common uses of this feature are to create distinct WinGREP Projects for different source trees, document repositories, and Open Source software. Ideally, you should have one WinGREP project for each working area that you use, and one project for each document directory. Give meaningful names to each project to easily distinguish between them.

Share Your Experience with Projects

Whether you are a software developer, forensic investigator, linguist, webmaster, or using WinGREP for another purpose, there are probably users who would appreciate ideas for using WinGREP features. Share your ideas and examples by sending an email to us at feedback@hurricanesoft.com

Adding Emacs and vim to your editor list
Tip Submitted by Kim Pries.

Adding Editors is fast and easy. Bring up the Options menu (F10) and select the IDE/Editor Tab. The "New" button invokes the Configure Application dialog.

Select the "Application" tab and enter the name of your editor. Select appropriate options from the checkboxes and indicate the file types to associate with the editor you?ve entered. Next, select the Launch tab and indicate the location of your executable file. Set parameters and appropriate checkboxes and click OK twice to save your new configuration.

Adding EMACS: Indicate the file location (Something like C:\emacs\bin\emacs)

Launch Parameters: +#LINENUM# #FILENAME#

Adding VIM (Vi improved): Indicate the file location (Something like C:\Vim\vim60\gvim)

Launch Parameters: +#LINENUM# #FILENAME#

Thanks to Kim Pries for submitting this tech tip!

Purchase options

The online purchase system will accept major credit cards (MasterCard, VISA, and American Express).

If you would like to purchase using a Company Purchase Order, call us at 816-795-8955 x 14 or fax your PO to us at 816-795-8227. A sales representative will contact you with details on how to complete the transaction.

Single user pricing is $89 for standard and $149 for professional edition. Multiple seat licensese are also available and may be purchased through our online store or by calling our sales department at 816-795-8955 x 14.

Text from the license agreement (LicenseH.txt in the installed directory) states:

You have the non-exclusive right to use the Product on a SINGLE computer. You may not distribute copies of the Product or documentation to others. You may make one (1) copy of the Product solely for backup purposes. You may transfer the Product from one computer to another on a permanent basis only (meaning that all files are permanently removed from the source computer).

If you need additional time to evaluate Hurricane Search, please feel free to contact us at sales@hurricanesoft.com to request an extension of your trial period.

Replace

Hurricane Search can perform a search and replace that compresses multiple spaces/tabs into one space or tab.

1) Select the directory or directories you would like to search from the Explorer tree
2) Select the File Mask that is appropriate for your file type
3) Select Regular Expression Search Type
4) In the "Search For:" field, enter the text surrounding the unwanted spaces or tabs, separated by "\s*" (e.g. "sometext\s*othertext")
5) Enter the text "Replace:" and with the desired spacing (e.g. "sometext sometext" or "sometext\tsometext")
6) Click "Start"
7) Hurricane Search will confirm with you before replacing instances of the specified text.

Search

To search for text in multiple types of files, simply list each file type, separated by semicolons. For example, to search in *.pas and *.inc files, you would use:

*.pas;*.inc

There are a few possible explanations.

The most frequent problem is that you may not have selected the Search Sub Dirs option. This allows the search to traverse subdirectories in an effort to locate all matching files. Selecting this option frequently results in a much larger search.

Another possibility is that you may have Advanced options set that prevent a match from occurring. Click on the menu fly-out to the right of the File Mask: field and click on Clear Advanced Options... (if it is enabled). If this menu options is not enabled, then you do not have Advanced Options set.

Also, make certain that the Expression Type is set correctly for the type of search that you are attempting. In many cases, changing to a different expression type may result in a different set of matches returned. If this appears to solve the problem, referring to What is GREP and Regular Expressions? may help to determine why.

You may also need to un-select the Case Sensitive option. This will allow all matches to be returned, even if the case does not match.

Another problem may be, when using Standard Search, you have the Match All Words option checked. This will only return search matches if ALL of the words in the search expression are found in the file.

If all else fails, you can contact Hurricane Software Support for assistance.

Using Hurricane Search 4.x, simply type the UNC style path in the directory combo box.

In WinGREP 3.x You have to map a network drive using Windows Explorer to search network drives. UNC style directory designations are not supported in 3.x. Version 4 and beyond accounts for UNC directories.

You can set the maximum number of matches allowed from the Hurricane Search Options dialog. From the View menu, select Options... and choose the Results tab. Check the Limit Match Results and set the value from one (1) to 500,000.

Hurricane Search will search compressed files without you having to manually decompress the file first. It will also search ZIP files nested within ZIP files.. and ZIP's nested in ZIP's nested in ZIP's...you get the idea.

Simply select the Archive checkbox and in the file mask field, use the extensions of the expanded files (ie: doc, txt, etc)

You can use the directory flyout to pick a single zip file to search, or point to a directory for searching the entire directory.

Yes, just use the regular expression symbol for OR, which is the broken bar / "pipe" symbol "|" to seperate each item in the list. For example, to find the following list:
Apples
Apples
Oranges
Peaches
Pears

Use the following regular expression:

Apples|Oranges|Peaches|Pears

There is no fixed size limit for the search expression field. A standard Windows edit control is used and can handle up to 32k of input. The regular expression engine was designed to handle very complex regular expressions.

Q. After entering all of the search criteria, I want to execute my search, but I can't find a start button.

A. Actually, you are probably missing the entire bottom of the WinGREP 4 interface. In WinGREP version 4.0 - 4.0.2.9 you may see this problem. This is due to a font size issue, and has been corrected in release 4.0.3. Please download the latest release of Hurricane Search from the download page and the problem will be resolved.

Hurricane Search will search for multiple words in the same file by using the "Match All Words" option using Standard Search.

To find multiple words in the same file

A. Select the directory or directories you would like to search from the Explorer tree
B. Select the File Mask that is appropriate for your file type
C. Select Standard Search
D. Enter the text to be found (ie: "Dog White" will search for all files with both Dog and White)
E. Select "Match All Words"
F. If the files you wish to search are in a zip or jar file, Select "Search Zips and Jars"
G. Click Start

Hurricane Search will search for multiple words on the same line by using Regular Expressions.

A. Select the directory or directories you would like to search from the Explorer tree
B. Select the File Mask that is appropriate for your file type (Optional)
C. Select Regular Expression Search Type
D. Enter the words, using the syntax .* between words (ie: dog.*white).
E. If the files you wish to search are archived, Select "Search Zips and Jars"
F. Click Start
G. Hurricane Search will return all instances where dog appears first on the same line as white.

Maybe - Hurricane Search can perform a "binary" serach on the files and display instances of the search expression if the files are not encrypted or scrambled. However, Hurricane Search does not offer the ability to open the email message that contains the match.

Hurricane Search does not directly support unicode searching. However, you can search Unicode by using a regular expression style search.

For instance, here is how you would search for the word security using a regular expression style search:

1) Select the files/directories you are interested in.
2) In the Search Type: field, select Regular Expression
3) In the Search For: field, type the expression "SECURITY|S.E.C.U.R.I.T.Y" (without the dbl quotes).
4) Click the Start button

This will search for the word security in standard ASCII files, and will find security in double-byte unicode files.

GREP stands for General Regular Expression Parser, Global Regular Expression Print as well as a few other variations (although there is still some debate about the exact wording). GREP is all about Regular Expressions. Regular Expressions are a very powerful syntax to describe search patterns. Look in WinGREP's help file under "Regular Expression" for details on supported expressions.

For a little more history on GREP, click here.

The following is taken from the WinGREP help file:

A regular expression is basically a text string that has special control codes embedded in it. These codes form expressions that an expression parsing engine extracts and deciphers. An example of a regular expression is : ^beg[ai]n - this expression will match all lines that either start with "begin" or "began". The following regular expression characters are supported by WinGREP (replace ... with search text) :

    ^...  ...$  (.)  ...*  ...+  [...]  [^...]  [...-...]  \...

       ^-----period anywhere in expression


 ^...	A circumflex matches a text string at the start of a line.
	Examples :
		^begin		Matches "begin" at start of any line


 ...$	A dollar sign matches  a text string the end of a line.
	Examples :
		then$		Matches "then" at end of any line



 .	A period matches any character.
	Examples :
		so..y		Matches "soggy", "sorry", "sorty"
		^beg.n		Matches "begin", 'began", "begun" 
at start of any line



 ...*	An asterisk after a character matches zero or more 
        occurrences of that character. 
	Examples :
		fur*y 		Matches "fuy", "fury", "furry"



 ...+	A plus sign after a character matches one or more 
        occurrences of that character. 
	Examples :
		fur+y 		Matches "fury", "furry", but does not match "fuy"


[...]	Characters in brackets match only one character that 
        appears in the brackets.
	Examples :
		^beg[ai]n	Matches "begin" or 'began" at start of line, 
		            but not "begun"



[^...]	A circumflex in brackets means match any character but the 
        ones listed	in the brackets.
	Examples :
		beg[^au]n$	Matches "begin" at end of line, but not "begun" 
		            or "began"



[...-...]	A hyphen within the brackets signifies a range of 
            characters. 
	Examples :
		beg[a-i]n	Matches "began", "begen", "begin", but not 
		            "begon" or "begun"


  \...  	A backslash before an expression character tells WinGREP 
            to treat that character literally, not as a regular 
            expression character.
	Examples :
		char\[20\]	Matches "char[20]"
		(cost\*qty)	Matches "(cost*qty)"

If Hurricane Search has trouble filtering your Word Document, you can configure the filter to allow binary mode searching. This has the added benefit of being faster and more thorough search (finding text that is "hidden" from the filter). However, this technique will show matches in binary format in the Hurricane Search preview window.

Follow these steps to turn Word filtering off:

1) Press F10 or choose "View->Options..." from the main menu.
2) Go to the "File Types" tab
3) Un-check "Search Word Files:" option.

Now, when you search *.doc (word files), you will be searching the word file in binary mode.

Hurricane search does not decode base64 data and documents. It can perform a byte level binary search and can search in nested zip files.

Some common mail and address-book file-types are listed below with notes if they are searchable or not.

*.pst - Outlook mail file - encrypted and unsearchable

*.dbx - Outlook Express mailbox files - data stored in plain-text. Searchable. Results are displayed in binary viewer.

*.wab - Windows Address Book - data stored in unicode. Searchable using unicode style search (see below). Results are displayed in binary viewer.

*.mbx - Eudora mailbox files -Data stored in plain-text - searchable.

To perform a search in a unicode file, you will need to add a period (".") between each character in the search string. The period tells the regular expression engine to allow any one character in that space (similar to the old DOS "?"). For example, if you were searching for the word "hurricane", you would use the regular expression "h.u.r.r.i.c.a.n.e". If you were unsure if it was unicode or not, use the regular expression "hurricane|h.u.r.r.i.c.a.n.e" that covers both unicode and plain-text. Be sure to use these in a regular expression type search.

Hurricane search can search registry files. To search a registry file, search NTUSER.DAT in the users "Documents and Settings" user directory. Hurricane Search will perform a binary search of the registry file. It can only do this for users that are not currently logged in (windows won't allow searching the current users registry file).

Hurricane Search will also search other *.dat index files (containing cookies, urls, history, etc).