Find and Run Robot is different from other search engines in that when multiple files match your search string, Find and Run Robot tries to figure out which files you are most likely to be interested in, and puts those at the top of a sorted list. It does this by scoring each result using a number of adjustable rules.
The heuristic scoring tab shows rules-of-thumb for scoring results, to help give higher scores to results that are likely to be most useful to you. You can disable any rule by unchecking it. Order is unimportant.
| • | History File Bonus: These are the points awarded by default to files added to the Launch History list when they are added after you launch them (you can customize the points awarded to specific files in the Launch History window). This setting therefore only has an indirect result, if you make this value low, you are saying that new programs added to the Launch History list will not be given much priority over other results. |
| • | Extact Match Bonus: This is a bonus given to a result if the filename (minus extension and path) match the search string exactly as you have typed it. |
| • | Leftmost Match Bonus: This is a bonus given to any result where the search string matches the begining characters of the result, useful because most of the time you are typing in the first few letters of the file you are searching for. |
| • | Percentage of Search String Points: These are points given to reward shorter names over longer names; can be very useful at weeding out helper files for a main file. an exact match would receive the points listed; if length of found file was twice size of search string, than half of these points would be awarded to it. |
| • | Whitespace Removal Penalty: Sometimes files names have spaces in them, sometimes they don't. Often you can't remember if the file is "Photoshop" or "Photo Shop." To help you, Find and Run Robot asks that you type "photo shop", and then it will automatically look for both what you type, and also a version with no spaces ("photoshop"). Thes points specified indicate the added score (or cost if negative) for files that match the second case when spaces were removed. |
Like all rules, you can right click on one and adjust the score associated with that rule.