[njuyhb]

Is there a way to get spotlight to recognize substrings inside files instead of just whole strings? E.g.: say I'm searching on the string "ndvpl". In the files I'm searching, there will be strings like "qndvpl" or "xndvpl", and maybe even just "ndvpl". I want ALL of those files to be found by spotlight, not just the exact string matches. Is this possible?

(The files in question are pdf files, so I don't think the unix "find" command would work in this case.)

[mduell]

find pdf | pdf2txt | grep ndvpl

[njuyhb]

Originally Posted by mduell 

find pdf | pdf2txt | grep ndvpl

pdf2txt doesn't seem to be a built-in command.

In any event, I'd really prefer to not have to do this in a terminal - I paid good money for this mac, I really think I should be able to do this without having to be a unix guru. Is there really no way to do this in spotlight, or from the gui somewhere?

[mduell]

Well right, that wasn't a literal command, just pseudocode for an idea of how to achieve your goal.

I'm not sure I understand how paying "good money" has anything to do with your ability to do something through a GUI; seems entirely non sequitur. What makes you think there's a way to do it through the GUI when you haven't been able to find a way to do it?

[njuyhb]

I didn't say that there was a way to do it. I was asking if there was. It just seems odd to me that spotlight will only let you search on whole strings, at least where pdf is concerned. That's a pretty crippling "feature".