

Ask HN: challenging Google/Bing search problem - lunchbox

TL;DR: Google and Bing let you search for certain binary files like pdf, doc, and pptx; is there a way to search for lesser known binary file formats?<p>Details:
I am researching several computer programs, and would like a random sample of ~100 real-world files made by users of each application. For example, I'd like to get a bunch of  .pub (Publisher) files, .vpp (Visual Paradigm) files, .eap (Enterprise Architect) and .vsd (Visio) files.<p>Google and Bing index a few popular binary file formats, so I can do searches like this:<p>mySearchTerm filetype:pdf<p>mySearchTerm filetype:doc<p>mySearchTerm filetype:pptx<p>However, they don't support these lesser known binary formats in the same way. As a result, searching for these other file extensions yields many fewer results; I suspect there are way more files with that extension on the internet, but they are just not turning up on my search. Maybe files with a proprietary MIME type are ignored by the search engines.<p>Also, many of the results are not in the file format of interest; they are just regular web pages that happen to have that string at the end of the URL. For example, searching for filetype:eap returns www.facebook.com/rachel.eap, which is not what I am looking for in this context.<p>My next idea was to search for a string that occurs in the binary file if I open it in a text editor. For example, Visio *.vsd files tend to have the string _VPID_ALTERNATENAMES buried in the binary. But that approach didn't work very well.<p>Any ideas on how I can achieve the goal?
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Google for "file search engine"

This one seems to work: <http://globalfilesearch.com/>

[http://globalfilesearch.net/index.aspx?q=.eap&t=Files...](http://globalfilesearch.net/index.aspx?q=.eap&t=Files&s=all&e=&a=&f=0&m=SIMPLE&c=20)

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lunchbox
Awesome!

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delineal
Try these maybe:

".vsd" diagram download

".eap" sample file download

".pub" publisher sample file download

".vpp" visual paradigm diagram example file download -extensions

