Search files in current folder doesn't work

Question

When I search my whole mac for e.g. "Danse Macabre" i get the results from all over the place, which is to be expected.
So when I go into the folder I get a list of files including the one I was searching for. So far so good.
While typing in a new search inside that current folder, the file list refreshes and still shows me all files in that folder, even though the search string isn' part of most of the names:
When I actually specify to only look at the actual file names, the list shows only the file including the actual string. Unintuitive but acceptable. Just pressing the enter key will still show the whole unfiltered directory.
However - and that is my real grip - when I want to find specific files, e.g. all files containing the string "cab" then this happens:
The list empties the moment I type in the third letter, which doesn't make any more sense than showing all files when typing in the first letter. And when I actually commit the search which should show me all files containing "cab" in the name, I got nothing.
This makes the search feature in finder completely useless.
What's going on?
And how do I fix it?

Answer 1

I played around with this a little.
Although typing into the folder search field gives you an option labeled  "Filename contains…", what you really seem to get is a search for "Filename contains a 'word' that begins with…."
A new "word" in the filename can be the beginning of the filename, anything that comes after a punctuation character, or a case change. The matching criteria itself ignores the case.
So in your example, you had a file named "01 Danse macabre.mp3", and a filename search for "cab" didn't find it. I think that is because "cab" is in the middle of the string, and is not a "word" as defined above. As an exercise, I renamed one of my own files as "01 Danse macabre.mp3", and as expected, searching for the filename "cab" didn't find it. However if I then capitalized the "C" so that the filename was "01 Danse maCabre.mp3" then a search for "cab" did find it:
"Cab" starts a new "word" because of the case change. The search itself is case-insensitive, so that searching for "cab" finds "Cab".
This shows the problem, but doesn't fix it. As a work-around, instead of using the top-right search field to type in "cab", instead hit command-F to bring up the search window.  Change the initial "Kind is Any" line to "Name contains". Now you get a true "contains" search instead of a "word begins with" search. When I searched for "cab" this this way, I did find "01 Danse macabre.mp3":