# Getting started in Ferret **URL:** \ **Category:** Ferret\ **Created:** [October 3, 2008, 7:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/getting-started-in-ferret/150100 "2008-10-03T19:19:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Hugh\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/d2c977/32.png) [@Hugh\_S](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Hugh_S)\ **Post date:** [October 3, 2008, 7:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/getting-started-in-ferret/150100/1 "2008-10-03T19:19:08Z")
I recent found the ferret book, looked at it and decided it was time I looked into this. A few questions, having rushed through most of the book once. O’Reilly books traditionally point to a place where the code can be downloaded (and one usually gets a tarball split into chapters). Is there such a place for the Ferret book? I see nothing mentioned… I’d like to use this for searching my files of various types. There is an example of how to do this for text, and then there is explanation of how to build analysers for other file types. I’d like to know if it is intended that pre-made analysers will not be provided? I’m thinking that, supposing I write something that will take a file in mbox format, break it into messages, and provide a document with info about From:, To:, Bcc:, and Subject lines, and maybe information about the MIME types (if I ever get that far), would this kind of thing ever get included in Ferret, so programmers better than I am can build on it? I looked for gems with ferret “goodies” in them for this sort of thing, but `gem query -r -n /ferret/i` turned up nothing now that I’ve installed ferret. Maybe I munged the format of the command. I also get this impression because the ferret web site points to various other places for this sort of thing. Finally, I was rather alarmed, when looking through the archives, that a lot of the discussion is about people finding something else to use instead. Are patches being accepted? ``` Thank you, Hugh ```