Spotlight does not find. Indexing works.

The "<" and ">" characters in Spotlight are reserved operators for earlier or later than qualification. For example, any HTML files created before a date:

kind:html created:<11/01/2025

or after a date:

kind:html created:>11/01/2025

For document types that support a Spotlight size, one can use those comparison operators to find files that are less than or greater than a given size. Or one can isolate PDF documents for instance whose pages are greater than 50.

Because Spotlight searches are case-insensitive and do not permit wildcards, even a partial string should find the containing document if unique, or documents if otherwise. That can reduce the complexity of the search string.

christer280 wrote:

If you have this line in a shtml and search for web_InitAO there is no finding.

<!--#4DSCRIPT/web_InitAO-->

If you change the line to

!--#4DSCRIPT/web_InitAO-->

spotlight finds web_InitAO.

Why does a < stop the finding ?

Not sure what to say about your shtml...

I use php for server side Includes. Hard to believe this would make the difference because of file type.

however you can refine spotlight search(?) and compare your results.

kind:word

kind:image

keyword:austria

name:partialnamestring

kind:pdf

tag:flac

created:>12/01/2023

ref: Narrow your search results on Mac

Narrow your search results in Finder on Mac - Apple Support

if rebuilding the Spotlight index does not work...Rebuild the Spotlight index on your Mac - Apple Support

A SafeBoot Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support will sort many anomalies...reboot and compare your results.

no resolve —you can delete all files under ~/Library/Metadata/CoreSpotlight/ and compare your results...

ref: Tahoe: Spotlight Doesn't Index and Search… - Apple Community