Suggestion based linux file search

[A2L]

Hello all,
I'm thinking about doing a software which does a suggestion based file search of linux files. Juz like the google suggest feature, this software should display suggestions dynamically when a character is typed.. The user can select any of the suggestions and the file location and properties are displayed..Is such a software possible in linux? Can anyone lead me in the right direction as i dont know where to start in this project..Plz help..



Thanks in advance

[Rubberman]

This is certainly possible. How to accomplish it has about as many solutions as there are developers to do it. You need to understand how to access file system structures (directories and directory entries) from a C/C++/Java or whatever program and then utilize the appropriate programming language functions needed to present what you suggest to the user.

As I was trying to indicate, the idea is sound, but from your comments you do not yet have the requisite knowledge about Linux and Linux programming to implement your vision. Do some more studying, and obtain/study the source code for similar applications in order to get a better idea of how to approach solving this. Good luck. I will be happy to help once you have a better idea how you want to start to deal with this problem.

[A2L]

thanks a lot for ur time...

I've already begun my research part on the file accessing part. But considering the front end, how can the results be dynamically displayed as the user types in characters. I've heard that google uses AJAX technology to implement the google suggest feature. Similiarly, windows have used XML based functions to implement it. Does Java/C# etc support that feature. I know Java but i havent come across such methods yet. How can this be implemented in linux?
Btw, the openoffice help option provides a suggestion based search. Any way i can extend that feature to searching files across Linux??

[Rubberman]

Ajax is simply an acronym for Asyncronous Java Script and XML. FWIW, Java script is NOT Java. There is certainly XML support for C and C++ (Xerces, etc). Also, Open Office is a Java application suite. The source code is freely available for your perusal. You could adapt its search algorithms to your purposes, I'm sure.