Overview

Introduction

Argus Panoptes is a search tool that can find information inside files. What separates Argus Panoptes from other tools is that it can find information that is not necessarily a perfect match with what you are looking for. Imagine you are looking for a document that has someone's name in it, but you are not sure anymore how the name is spelled. You can use Argus Panoptes to find it by having it search for your suggested search term and include near miss matches.

Search Methods

Argus Panoptes has several ways of searching and each has its own unique advantages.

The first search method is an exact search. You use this to find only exact matches of what you are looking for. Using exact search you can optionally set case-sensitivity and whole words only. This is one of the fastest search methods, but it also returns the least matches and is not flexible at all.

The second search method is a phonetic search. Searching phonetically means Argus Panoptes will try to find matches that sound the same as the search term you have entered. This method is a bit slower than an exact search, but it does return more matches and is more flexible. You can choose to use an exact phonetic search or a near miss search. The difference is that an exact phonetic search returns only matches that are phonetically identical. A near miss phonetic search includes phonetic matches that have the same start or ending as the search term. This comes in handy when a search term can have a prefix or suffix. A phonetic search always matches whole words only and is never case-sensitive.

Another search method uses Regular Expressions. Using this method, you provide a Regular Expressions patterns as the search term and all strings matching your pattern will be returned. The speed of a search using Regular Expressions depends on the type and complexity of the pattern, but it is fast in general. Regular Expressions are very flexible and you can find information with it that you cannot find using any other search method. A good example is extracting all email addresses or telephone numbers from multiple files at once.

The last search method is the extensive search. As the name implies, this is the most extensive and also the slowest search method. The extensive search combines an exact, whole words only, case-insensitive search and a phonetic near miss search. On top of that the method uses various checks to see if a word may be spelled wrong. This spelling test is done by a number of different techniques, of which most are optional and can be configured in the search template.

Templates

Argus Panoptes uses several templates to minimize the interaction before each search. You can store your search method and its settings in a Search Template, which can be quickly recalled from the main window. You can define as many search templates as you want and you can name them as you wish. Argus Panoptes comes with four default search templates, one for each search method.

Another template is the Filter Template. This template defines sets of include and exclude filters for files in folders. For example, you may want to create a filter template that will include only Word documents in any given folder. This could be achieved by defining a filter template that has an include filter of "*.doc". The same way you can define templates that exclude certain files. The filters are constructed the same way you are used to when using DOS. Please note that you are not limited to including or excluding extensions; you can also choose to include or exclude complete or partial filenames.

Macros

Once you have performed a search and the results are shown, you may want to perfom an action on a result. Argus Panoptes is not an editor so you will need external tools to edit files. You can create macros to define actions that must be performed when right-clicking a search result and choosing the macro. Argus Panoptes comes with a built-in macro editor where you can define your own macros. Argus Panoptes has one default macro which will launch the file that has the result with its default application.

Context View

To put a search result in its context, selecting a result will show the entire line or paragraph the search result is in. The match itself will be highlighted for you.