swfchan: Search

Searching swfchan.

How?

Use the field at the top of every page. It's below the main logo, you really can't miss it.

How often?

If a lot of people search the site at the same time it puts a lot of pressure on the server, therefore each IP are allowed only three searches to be made with five seconds between each search. If you wait a while after a search you will gain back one "search credit" for each 20 seconds that passes.

Update: These days there are no search limits except that there must be two seconds between each query.

What?

You can search among the spotted file names and the spotted file sizes.

SEARCH FILENAME

When you make a search you will only search the file names that the site's system has ever came accross. If you want to search for something else, like some text that is mentioned somewhere on a certain flash's info page, you'll have to use external search engines on the web, for example WebCrawler. Note that when you make a search you will only get hits if a file name contains all your key words, in that order and (if you don't use wildcards) directly after each other. Tip: Start out your search with only one word then narrow it down if needed.

THE SEARCH INDEX

Keep in mind that since the site is only updated globally once every fifteen minutes it means that recently added flashes arent included in the search index yet.

OVERLOOKABLE CHARACTERS

There are a couple of characters that always will be excluded from your search, these are: " " (space), "_", "-" and ".". This helps to deliver good results (well, lots of results anyway. Please read on to learn how to make your results less).

EXACT SEARCH

If your query ends with ".swf" it means that you are looking for a exact file name. All other search modifiers will be disabled~~, the only thing that you can combine with a exact search is "?" at the beginning to limit the results per page~~. You may sometimes want to make a semi-exact search, like if you wish to make use of lazy searching or are going to use wildcards in the file name. This is done by starting your query with either "<" or ">". (The overlookable characters are still overlooked when you make a exact search.)

WILDCARDS

You can use an asterix (*) when searching to indicate that any number of characters can go there (including none). You can place * at the beginning or at the end of your query to force results to either end or being with your query. You never have to place * at both the end and the beginning of your search, the system always interprets that they are present there (if you wish it not to you have to make a semi-exact search by using < or >).

LAZY SEARCH

By default the system will also search the file names translated to only english characters, meaning characters using diacritic marks are transformed to english characters (example: "åäöìûü" becomes "aaoiuu") and numbers and other non-english characters are removed. Numbers and non-english characters (like Asian letters or UTF-8 symbols) are however still included in the search since the original file names are also searched. The "Lazy Search" feauture helps to find results but should be disabled if you get too many results or are looking for non-english file names. To disable Lazy Search simply start your search with a slash or backslash (/ or \), for example searching for "\1o1" instead of only "1o1" will give a lot less results. When searching for both numbers and letters I strongly recommend you turn off lazy searching!

SEARCH FILESIZE

If your search is a number, and over three characters long, it is assumed that you are looking for a filesize in bytes. You will be given an additional list of search results showing flash files that have been spotted with that file size at one time or another (a normal filename search will also be performed, its results will be placed at the bottom). You can search for filesizes between two numbers by placing "-" in your search, for example "102400-1048576" will show files seen with a size between 100 KiB and 1 MiB. You can also spread a single number with 0.5 KiB by placing ":" in front of your search (many ":" equals bigger spread). Example: ":102400" will find files seen between 99,6 KiB and 100,6 KiB in size, and "::102400" between 99 KiB and 101 KiB. You may use these prefixes after each number to multiply it by 1024 (kibibyte) or 1048576 (mebibyte): K, KB, KiB, M, MB, MiB (not case sensitive). Tip: If you're wondering what name a flash file should have, simply copy its file size and enter it into the search field together with one ":", like so: ":1.34 MB". This should make it appear in the results, check the screens if there are many hits, or broaden the spread if there are too few. Notice however that only two decimals are very unprecise when it comes to MiB, because of different rounding the flash you are looking for might not show up unless you use many ":".

#P

The number followed by the letter "p" (as in "points") that show up for each search result is how many times that name/size has been spotted for that exact flash file (not how many times the name/size has been spotted in total or how many times the flash file itself has been spotted).

SCREENSHOT LIMIT

~~Each list of search results can show 50 screenshots, after the 50 first results only a link to the flash's full screenshot will be given.~~

Update: You can view the thumbnailed screenshot for every result by clicking a link to load more (requires JavaScript).

MAX RESULTS

You can view 50 pages of results when searching the file name with 200 results per page (that's max 10000 results per query). A question mark (?) at the very beginning of the query limits the results to 50 results per page, allowing you to see the screenshots for all hits (the page limit will still be 50 though). A maximum of 200 results will be given when searching for a file size (shown only on page 1).

Update: 3000 results can be shown with 200 results per page (15 pages max). This sounds like a downgrade from the way it was before but the inner workings has changed and the engine actually gives much better results now (all results are processed regardless of what page is shown, this is why queries that yield many results take much longer to load than before). The only query that will ever reach the limit are those very short ones, like searching for a single letter.

GROUPING

If multiple results are returned belonging to the same flash file, those results will be grouped (shown below each other). Understand that only given results are grouped, if there are more than 200 results (or 50 if you're using the ? command) the same flash file may appear on a different page with another less seen yet still matching name.

Update: Results are always grouped correctly now, doesn't matter what page is being shown.

SORTING ORDER

The results are always shown so those with the highest points are at the top (in other words: the flash file that have been seen with a file name matching your search the most times are at the top). Grouped file names are sorted descending (also by points) below their highest kin. If two results have the same amount of points they are sorted by ID, where the newer goes under the older.

COMMAND READING ORDER

When reading the various commands you can place in your query (in order to modify your search) the system will check for them in a particular order. If you place some in the wrong place your query might not be read correctly, giving you misleading results. This is how the system reads your commands: ?, .swf, :, <, >, /, \, *

Update: The question mark command does nothing now. There is no need to limit the amount of results per page any more so it was removed.

THREAD SEARCHING

The search engine on swfchan.com focuses on searching for file names or file sizes. The search engine on swfchan.net can be used to search archived threads for keywords.