Search for asterisk?

Forum for the PDF-XChange Editor - Free and Licensed Versions

Moderators: TrackerSupp-Daniel, Tracker Support, Paul - Tracker Supp, Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team, Chris - Tracker Supp, Sean - Tracker, Ivan - Tracker Software, Tracker Supp-Stefan

Post Reply
TabletThree
User
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2008 10:10 pm

Search for asterisk?

Post by TabletThree »

The asterisk * is used as a wildcard in search. Is there a way to search a document for asterisks?
Willy Van Nuffel
User
Posts: 2347
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 12:10 pm

Re: Search for asterisk?

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Hi,

I do not have the impression that * is used for wildcard Find or Search in PDF-XChange Editor.

When you introduce an asterisk in the Find or in the Search box, it effectively finds it in the text.
Just make sure to check "Include Page Text" (and/or other content) in the Find or Search options.

You can also copy/paste the asterisk (or other character you are searching for) from the text to the Find or Search box, to make sure you really have the right character to look for.

Kind regards.

Willy
Attachments
PDF-XChange Editor - Search - Options.png
PDF-XChange Editor - Search - Options.png (12.42 KiB) Viewed 527 times
TabletThree
User
Posts: 24
Joined: Mon Oct 06, 2008 10:10 pm

Re: Search for asterisk?

Post by TabletThree »

:shock:
You are correct, Willy Van Nuffel. I was not thinking straight.

I have a doc close to 1000 pages long. When I typed my search string ** in the search field, there were so many matches I jumped to the wrong conclusion that asterisk was being treated as some sort of a wildcard. At quick glance, it appeared that every instance of a double letter was being found.
image.png
After a closer look today, I see it's not every instance, but on a page by page basis, a certain letter. In other words, on one page, all the "ss" instances are found. On another page, all the oo, ff, pp, nn, or several others. No pattern in sight. On one page I even found a three letter combo "imi" highlighted as a match.

image.png

So, I tried a few other large documents, and search worked normally.

Finally I went back and looked at the font properties of the problem file, and found it was custom encoding, embedded, type 1. (Vs most others that are TrueType and not embedded.

image.png
image.png (13.21 KiB) Viewed 503 times

So, I'm chalking it up to that and moving on.

Thanks for the sanity check.
Attachments
image.png
image.png (13.21 KiB) Viewed 503 times
Willy Van Nuffel
User
Posts: 2347
Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 12:10 pm

Re: Search for asterisk?

Post by Willy Van Nuffel »

Thanks for the reply.

I wonder what happens when you copy the found words to Notepad. Do you see asterisks in them, or do you see the original words?

It might be interesting for Tracker Support to have some extracted page of one of your PDF's showing the problem.

Regards.
User avatar
TrackerSupp-Daniel
Site Admin
Posts: 8436
Joined: Wed Jan 03, 2018 6:52 pm

Re: Search for asterisk?

Post by TrackerSupp-Daniel »

Hello, Willy Van Nuffel

If the search is finding them when looking for asterisks, it is almost certain that the font in question is an incomplete character set and so copying that text to notepad (or simply changing the font to a real font, like Arial) will reveal all that is wrong with it. If TabletThree would like to send us the file to investigate, we would appreciate it, but I do not expect we will find much more that they already found on their own.

Kind regards,
Dan McIntyre - Support Technician
Tracker Software Products (Canada) LTD

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Web site domain and email address has changed as of 26/10/2023.
https://www.pdf-xchange.com
Support@pdf-xchange.com
Post Reply