fastfind 1.0.0

Fast Windows/Linux file and directory search engine library.

fastfind

fastfind is a lightweight python library that lets you search files or directories extremely fast on Windows/Linux in your code while providing high customizability.

Installation

Use the following command to install fastfind:

pip install fastfind

Usage

Make sure to first import the library before using it in your code.

import fastfind

Then you can search for a file/folder by using:

result = fastfind.search(query="hidden_file", search_type="any", max_results=1000, timeout=5.0, roots=["C:\\Users"], all_dirs=True, max_files_per_dir=30, exact_match=True, exclude_folders=["C:\\Program_Files"], exclude_keywords=[".txt"])

Argument	Datatype	Explanation	Default Value
query	str	The name of the file/folder you want to search for. Here you can use Wildcards!	Required
roots	list[str] or None	The root directories to search, if None are provided all drives and folders will be searched.	None
exact_match	bool	When set to True, the given query has to exactly match the file/folders name instead of just containing it.	False
search_type	str, use: "any", "file" or "dir"	Whether you want to search only for files, folders or both.	any
max_results	int	How many results will be returned before stopping.	1000
timeout	float	The time in s of how long it takes before the library times out and stops searching.	5.0
all_dirs	bool	If set to True, all files, including system files, will be searched that would otherwise wouldn't be searched due to better performance.	False
max_files_per_dir	int or None	Limts how many files can be output from one single directory.	None
exclude_folders	list[str] or None	Folders whose content will be excluded in the search. The folder itself can still be found. All subfolders will still be searched. This is not affected by using all_dirs.	None
exclude_keywords	list[str] or None	Excludes results that have these given keywords in them. Here you can use Wildcards!	None

[!IMPORTANT] When you want to include all subfolders of a folder in "exclude_folders" or "roots" use '/Folder/Path/.' ! When only using '/Folder/Path/' all subfolders will still be searched (exclude_folders) or won't be searched (roots):

Example	C:/Users	C:/Users/User	C:/Users/User/documents	C:/Users/User/file.txt
exclude_folders=[r"C:/Users"]	visible	hidden	visible	visible
exclude_folders=[r"C:/Users/."]	visible	hidden	hidden	hidden

Wildcards

In the arguments query and exclude_keywords you can choose to use the wildcards * and ?.

* : Stands for any formation of letters/numbers/symbols of any length. So query="h*e" would return house and handsome.
? : Stands for one single character of any kind (letter/number/symbol). So query = "b?ll" would return ball and bell