Searching for a tilde (~) in filenames

[Phin]

One of the pieces of software I use - SketchUp - creates backups with the format "filename~.skp". The normal files just have the "filename.skp" format. I cannot search for the tilde symbol and my Dropbox is getting full and I'd like to delete all my old backup files.

Anyone any idea how to do this? It would take hours to do manually.

Thanks!

[Jay]

Hi @Phin, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Are you able to search for ~.skp on the site? I've tested this and it brings up the file immediately.

Keep me updated with any progress!

[Phin]

Hi Jay,

I can search for it, but it doesn't pick up the tilde, just the filename suffix (see screenshot)

I've tried renaming a file to be just  ~.skp and leaving it in the root Dropbox directory but it doesn't pick that up either.

If it helps, I'm using Safari Version 16.3 (18614.4.6.1.6) and OS Ventura 13.2.1 (22D68)

Thanks

[Megan]

Hey @Phin, thanks for the update! 

Do you notice the same behavior when searching through your files using a different browser too? 

[Здравко]

---

@Megan wrote:

...

Do you notice the same behavior when searching through your files using a different browser too? 

---

@Megan, What behavior are you expecting in different browser? 🧐 No the browser (whatever is in use) decides what symbol how to be treated. It's Dropbox server responsibility! And... there many symbols (including tilde) are treated as words separators and not as a part of the text to be looked for. I'm not aware of any way such symbols to be tagged (so included in the search).

Did you successfully find out a tilde somewhere? 😁 This may be a good feature request (not only about the tilde, but to any separator tagging)! 🙋

Add: Just few examples of separator symbols that I have a lot in my files/folders, but:

And at the end:

Congratulations! 🤦🤷

[Phin]

@Megan @Jay 

I have checked in Chrome, but as @Здравко says, it makes no difference.

This is a search string / operators issue I think. 

For example, Google allow complex operators like these 

And if you went to the Terminal in Mac and typed 

ls *~.skp 

it would bring up every file with the format ????????~.skp (where the question marks were anything). I believe this would work for the characters that @Здравко showed too.

Would you be able to able to ask the dev team to see what they think please? I suspect it will be one of those things that is either very easy to implement and hasn't been done because no one's ever shouted about it, or it will be a massing PITA and hasn't been done for that reason!

[Здравко]

---

@Phin wrote:

...

Would you be able to able to ask the dev team to see what they think please? I suspect it will be one of those things that is either very easy to implement and hasn't been done because no one's ever shouted about it, or it will be a massing PITA and hasn't been done for that reason!

---

Yeah... I agree. 😉 Even more: to avoid "a massing PITA", the current search mode may stay as default one, so the people that don't get interested wont ever noticed the addition. It's easy to be added iconified dropdown menu at the searchline beginning (where a magnifying glass icon resides now).

There can be added command line path template option - representing a template feature for looking like POSIX shell does (for example: * - zero or more arbitrary symbols, ? - exactly one arbitrary symbol). It's simple and easy to use and let you represent more precisely what you're looking for.

It's a good idea, I think, to be added and more advanced search options, where the search template can describe even better the thing to be searched (usable not only for file or folder search, based on path). One such option can be regular expression (RE) usage - either basic RE (BRE) or extended RE (ERE) or maybe both. Despite of more difficult for usage, it's very powerful tool to search for something. Even more I cannot think of some platform not providing some kind of RE by default, so I'm ready to bet that Dropbox system core has it available already. So, it cannot be actually completely new feature, but rather providing access to existing feature, currently usable internally only (or it might have completely forgotten).

Final result: Instead of one magnifying glass icon at the searchline beginning, interchangeable icon set (the magnifying glass lefts the default), representing different search modes, providing lot of choices.

Let's see if/how fast such idea will attract attention from Dropbox side. 🧐🤔 Let's see...

[Phin]

**bleep** you autocorrect - I totally meant "massive"!

Great suggestions on the regular expression stuff. Let's hope they go for it - a more powerful search function helps everyone