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I lost some data since I edited the wrong file.

What had happened?

I used Super-F to find a file called "foo.txt".

I edited the file, but not the file in ~/doc/foo.txt, but a very old file in ~/tmp.

How can I avoid this in the future?

Is there a way to tell the indexing engine to skip certain files?

My question is not about recently-used files and not about filtering the search result. I want to suppress the indexing of some directories.

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If you click on the Filter Results you can restrict the files found in several ways (age, size, type). When you find a file, clicking on it once opens buttons, one of which is Show in Folder. Click that, and the folder containing the file will be opened. The Folder Name is also displayed.

A good practice is to have expectations about the contents of the file you're about to edit, and if the expectations are not met when you open the file, stop and ask yourself what's happening.

Unless you can predict all the files and folders you might make mistakes with, restricting indexing is a bad idea. Also, what if the file you need to find is in a folder you have suppressed indexing on?

For the pedants among us (I include myself): "Folders" are really "directories", and probably should be called "directories".

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  • Thank you for your answer. Somehow I have the impression, that you answer a different question. I don't want to filter the search result. I want to restricting indexing. Why do you think this is a bad idea? I use ~/tmp on mostly all systems I use. Why should I index it? Other example: I have machine output in ~/var/foobar containing several thousand small text files. It is plain useless to index it, and I want to restrict it.
    – guettli
    Feb 5, 2016 at 9:26
  • Not a different question. I was just pointing out that, IMHO, half-blinding indexing and continuing to use indexing may be a Bad Idea.
    – waltinator
    Feb 5, 2016 at 15:55
  • ok, thank you for our comment that half-blinding indexing may be Bad Idea. Back to the topic. How to exclude directories?
    – guettli
    Feb 5, 2016 at 18:11

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