Witzend Search Library

Witzend Software has released an important update of the Witzend Search Library, component software that adds sophisticated search capabilities to any Win32 application or Web page. In its latest release, the Search Library can

# Search into ZIP archives
# Scan documents such as PDF, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, etc.
# Look for up to 256 strings simultaneously
# Rank files according to search relevance
# Optionally deliver results in XML format



The Search Library can also create its own thread for execution, leaving the client application free to conduct other operations while a search is ongoing.

All of the Search Library’s core functions are written in highly-optimized 32-bit assembly language, assuring maximum speed and minimum size. In its dynamic link library form, the Search Library is less than 20K in size and requires no other auxiliary files, not even the C runtime library. The Search Library is completely thread-safe and can be accessed simultaneously by multiple threads.

The Search Library searches buffers of any size, and is able to locate ANSI, double-byte, and Unicode text strings. It is equally at home searching and/or replacing in disk files, able to “drill down” through nested subdirectories. Date and size filters offer further refinements when searching files, allowing an application to search only those files, for example, between 10K and 50K in size and dated within the last month. Boolean and proximity operators AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR enable searching for multiple strings at once. Applications can specify case sensitivity (find Abc but not abc) and whole-word filters (find any but not anywhere). The Witzend Search Library can even find misspelled words through its fuzzy-search feature.

Its speed frees the Search Library from the necessity of indexing files before searching them, an important advantage over other search products. This advantage ensures fast searches under conditions where files are frequently updated, allowing the Search Library to go immediately to work without having to first build a new search index.

The Search Library is designed to enhance any 32-bit Windows program, and can be easily incorporated into projects written in C, C++, Visual Basic, VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), and any other Win32 development environment such as Delphi and PowerBuilder. Web and ASP pages can access the Search Library’s ActiveX control via scripting languages such as JavaScript and VBScript. Extensive example code included with the package demonstrates clearly how to add the Search Library to a Win32 project to endow it with sophisticated and lightning fast search capabilities.

The Search Library’s unlimited license costs $199 US, and includes both the DLL and ActiveX control versions. A 30-day warranty and free technical support are provided.