Is there a utility for Windows that will take a text file, and let you enter words into a field and remove entries from the list as you type in more words? Something like typing in the address bar of a browser, where as you type, the entries that no longer match are removed. [more inside]
posted by inthe80s on Dec 4, 2009 - 15 answers

Natural Language Processing (NLP) Filter. I'm looking for a method (or category of methods) to judge the relevancy of a small unit of text, 100-200 chars, against similar units of text. [more inside]
posted by kuatto on Aug 8, 2009 - 6 answers

Can anyone recommend a powerful textual search tool I can use on anything I want? [more inside]
posted by valkyryn on Feb 6, 2009 - 11 answers

ComputerScienceFilter: What algorithms or existing programs out there are good for searching files with conversation? Say I had the transcripts of every single AOL chatroom conversation. What algorithm would find dialogs about oranges if I searched for "oranges" and rank them according to relevance?
posted by lpctstr; on Jun 25, 2007 - 16 answers

Is there a firefox plugin that will allow me to search ALL text on a webpage including dropdown menus and otherwise unsearchable fields? [more inside]
posted by hypocritical ross on Oct 23, 2006 - 8 answers

How do I make Windows XP search inside TPL files? I know they're text files, but because Windows doesn't recognise the extension, when I try to search for "a word or phrase in the file" it won't search inside the TPL files. I know I did this once before to get it to search PHP files, but I can't remember how I did it.
posted by RobotHero on Dec 13, 2005 - 4 answers

Runtime search on CD - What is your recommendation for an inexpensive (but not free) search utility to add to a data CD for use in searching its contents? [more inside]
posted by yclipse on Aug 2, 2005 - 3 answers

Text search tool: I'm looking for a word processor or text tool, that will allow me to search documents for phrases centred about particular words. I want to be able to specify a 'window,' say of 15 words; and the tool will then return *all* the text that occurs 15 words either side of the search target. Example: if I searched this AskMe page for "fanboy" as a target, and set my window as '6,' I would expect to get - "aren't trying to show off their fanboy Pitchfork-esque indie creds. The less politics" - from alidarbac's question below, as one of the returns. Free/share/commercial-ware all acceptable. Many thanks!
posted by carter on Nov 18, 2004 - 7 answers

sed: How do I use it to do a general search/replace on a bunch of files? The docs seem to believe all I have to do is feed it s/regexp/replacetext/g and a list of files and I'm off to the races, but rather than getting the files changed... [exciting conclusion inside] [more inside]
posted by namespan on Jun 29, 2004 - 7 answers

I need to convert a scanned pdf to searchable text, without printing it out and scanning it back in using OCR. Also, I'd like a cheap or free solution since I'm not likely to use it often ever again.
posted by nomis on May 6, 2004 - 17 answers