Pattern Digger
Download Trial version 1.2.6
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Pattern Digger finds and filters text across multiple files and folders. It is possible to perform full-text search or
scan for special notes inside any text file or source code.
It is very fast in searching for several sets of words in hundreds of files. You can filter, preview and export with ease.
Pattern Digger captures and displays the vital bits of information about the surrounding context. With Pattern Digger you are always into the right file and line, having a global overview and easy access to information related to the searched word or phrase. All this makes it very easy for you to inspect the context of a match.
Personal assistant for managing source code comments
Pattern Digger gives you easy access to all the specific words left in thousands of strings and hundreds of files a project contains.
The app. will list every occurrence of a word, phrase, or comment, so you can easily review, sort and prioritize 
the occurrences on the list.
Pattern Digger monitors files and updates while you work
Pattern Digger will detect all the changes inside the project folder, as you work, recursively within an entire directory tree.
Add or delete notes, move or rename files, interface will update accordingly.
Custom search phrases, search inside of comments only or full-text
You are free to add as many words as you want to list your own, custom notes.
Simply specify the words you want to find and the app takes care of the rest.
Choose to examine the comments in source code or perform full-text search across the project files.
Press Space 
to go directly to the right file and position
Quick Preview highlights syntax 
in source code and jumps right to the selected note.
The application is keyboard-friendly which makes navigation between search results easy.
Path control helps you to quickly open the directory containing the file or you can double click the table row to open the file in any text editor.
Exclusion rules 
with export to a text file
You can exclude files with specific extensions 
or completely exclude certain folders from a search.
The search results can be filtered by using the search fields, which will filter the results instantly, making it easier for you to track down the word you're looking for.
The export function will honor the currently active filters, so you can export the filtered results to a text file.
Display and review 
annotations across multiple folders
Pattern Digger displays everything around a whole project or a single file.
The matching count and the list of all files that contain the notes.
Quick editor helps you to quickly change the file, launch custom text editor, or just review all the results in a single file.
When words are not enough and IDE won't let you save a picture as a comment.
// TODO Pattern Digger will automatically parse out markdown and display the image when you take a quick preview (Space key).
The text will stay clean and easy to read while Pattern Digger will recognize the image link and display it appropriately.
The same thing is valid for markdown links. They will be extracted and clickable inside the results table row.
Features
- Support for any text file: plain text, source code, and various programming languages.
- Support for custom keywords.
- The file change monitor watches any directory you specify. New annotations will be detected in the background.
- Easy access to all the annotations.
- Ability to assign priority flag to an annotation.
- Ability to sort annotations by priority or file to which they belong.
- Document-based, can handle multiple projects, each in its own window.
- Query results are stored in the database, scan will be performed only when something has changed.
- Filtering and sorting results (by keyword or file).
- Exclusion rules for files and folders
- Exporting results (by keyword or file.)
- Quick search for text inside items.
- Quick preview.
- Print.
- Simple to use, intuitive interface.
- Retina display support.
- See: Supported comment formats
Tips
- Pattern Digger is simple to use, add a keyword and select folder.
- To set target folder you can drag and drop folder from Finder to the keywords view.
- When you load a saved project there is no need to rescan. Annotations are saved in database and restored. If there have been any changes since the last time, they will be detected in the background.
- To stop a search in progress just delete the keyword, the search will stop automatically.
- Pattern Digger does not alter any file, in any way, it scans files' content for keywords you specified.
- For more visual tutorial visit Help page.
- Why my files are not scanned ? See here.
Should I buy through FastSpring store, or via the Mac App Store ?
In order to make the latest version available to all users at the same time, without limitations, Pattern Digger includes Mac App Store license migration. If you bought the app. from the Mac App Store, direct build/demo version will unlock and you can get immediate updates.
To adopt sandboxing rules the Mac App Store version has several differences:
- For the file change monitor to work (for the previously saved projects only), you must manually re-select folder in a traditional "Select Folder" dialog, the Mac App Store version requires explicit permission to access folder on disk.
- If you're using markdown links inside notes which point to external images, the images must reside inside the project directory.
How to unlock demo version if you bought the app. from the Mac App Store ?
- Leave the Mac App Store version of the app. in the /Applications folder.
- Download latest version from the link above and save it somewhere on disk. Don't put it in /Applications folder for now, it needs the Mac App Store version to migrate the license.
- Start demo version you've downloaded, it will automatically locate the Mac App Store version in /Applications folder, and remove trial.
After that, you can move the app. to /Applications folder or wherever it's convenient for you.
Minimum system requirements
Mac OS X 10.7+