FastFileSearch - Native high-speed file search engine with indexed lookup [ALPHA].

Table of Contents

• Description
• Quick Start
• Key Features
• Performance
• Installation
• Building from Source
• Platform Support
• License
• Related Projects

Description

FastFileSearch is the second module in the FastJava file search engine trilogy:

• FastFileIndex - Full filesystem scan → produces a binary, mmap-capable index of all files
• FastFileSearch - Builds Prefix Trie, N-Gram index, Exact Match map, and Ranking engine on top of the index
• FastFileWatch - Uses USN Journal to keep the index + search structures live-updated with zero rescans

This architecture is similar to Everything, Spotlight, VSCode, and fsearch but modular and embeddable.

Quick Start

import fastfilesearch.FastFileSearch;
import fastfilesearch.FastFileSearch.SearchOptions;
import fastfilesearch.FastFileSearch.SearchResult;

public class Example {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Build search structures from index
        FastFileSearch.build("C:\\files.idx");
        
        // Prefix search (autocomplete)
        SearchOptions options = new SearchOptions()
            .limit(100)
            .fuzzy(true);
        
        SearchResult[] results = FastFileSearch.prefixSearch("C:\\Users\\andre\\Documents", options);
        
        for (SearchResult result : results) {
            System.out.println(result.path() + " (score: " + result.score() + ")");
        }
        
        // Cleanup
        FastFileSearch.cleanup();
    }
}

Key Features

• Prefix Trie - Fast autocomplete for path prefixes
• N-Gram Index - Fuzzy search with character n-grams
• Exact Match Map - O(1) exact filename lookups
• Ranking Engine - Recency, frequency, and path-based scoring
• Zero-alloc query execution
• Incremental updates
• Integration with FastFileWatch for live updates

Performance

Benchmark results comparing FastFileSearch to Java's normal file search:

Search Method	Time (ms)	Speedup
Java Files.walk()	144,832	1.0x
FastFileSearch (MVP)	100,681	1.44x

Note: Current MVP implementation uses Java stub. Native implementation with Prefix Trie and N-Gram Index will provide significant performance improvements.

Installation

Maven (JitPack)

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>jitpack.io</id>
        <url>https://jitpack.io</url>
    </repository>
</repositories>

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.andrestubbe</groupId>
    <artifactId>fastfilesearch</artifactId>
    <version>v1.0.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.andrestubbe</groupId>
    <artifactId>fastfileindex</artifactId>
    <version>v1.0.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.github.andrestubbe</groupId>
    <artifactId>fastcore</artifactId>
    <version>v1.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Gradle (JitPack)

repositories {
    maven { url 'https://jitpack.io' }
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.github.andrestubbe:fastfilesearch:v1.0.0'
    implementation 'com.github.andrestubbe:fastfileindex:v1.0.0'
    implementation 'com.github.andrestubbe:fastcore:v1.0.0'
}

Building from Source

For detailed build instructions, see COMPILE.md.

Platform Support

• Windows 10+ (x86_64) - Fully supported
• Linux - Planned
• macOS - Planned

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Related Projects

• FastFileIndex - Binary file indexing with mmap support
• FastFileWatch - USN Journal-based live file monitoring
• FastCore - Unified JNI loader and platform abstraction