from __future__ import * 28.2.2004

How not to design a search field

Many of Apple's applications have search fields, such as Help Viewer, Panther's finder, and Mail. However, if you've tried to use them, you probably find that they yield bizarre and typically useless results. I actually RTFM'ed, and here's why it sucks:

• It searches by word prefix (!!) and not by word.

• It uses english logical operators and parentheses (and, or, not) to build queries.

• The default search is or for all words.

• There is no way to search for phrases.

• You can't combine multiple types of queries (e.g. "From: Bob and Ippolito, Subject: mail and sucks")

There is, thank god, an undocumented workaround for first issue: it actually does search by word, not prefix, if you are using a logical operator. Therefore, to find emails that mention your friend ann, but you don't want to get hits on annual, announcement, etc. then you should search for "ann and ann".

I suppose you could use Mail's rule engine to do an ad hoc "advanced search" if you really needed to, but that sure sounds like a lot of work. I'd love to see regexes, but I think I'm better off waiting for hell to freeze over.