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Forum Discussion
Searching for a tilde (~) in filenames
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 Dro...
Jay
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi 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!
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?
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! 🤦🤷
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!
