Recursive File Selection
Many times it’s practical to specify a file criteria to match over a number of directories. Some examples:
- HTML files edited the last week
- MP3 files that are larger than 30 mb
- Text files containing the word engine
- Temporary binary files from a build (*.o, *.obj, *.pch, *.idb,…)
One may want to back up the files, move them, rename them, …etc.
File Workbench has tools to work with such selections in single folders or whole directory trees. These images show the difference between a highlighted and a selected file.
The File Selection Dialog
This dialog is opened through Num-Plus (selecting files) or Num-Minus (deselecting files).
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The goal of the dialog is setting up a file matching criteria, to be applied in the current folder (and optionally its child directories). A criterion can be one of: filename wildcard, path wildcard, file size, file type, file date, contents, or compound. Several criteria can be combined to together, by default, with the AND binding (the file must match each of the criteria). It is also possible to use an OR binding. If the first and checkbox to the left would be clicked, it would turn into an or combiner. Using the Filters functionality (clicking it opens a small toolbar) one can give a name to the current criteria (large mp3 files) and later reuse it. Such named criteria also appear in the compound category automatically. |
| Meaning | Criteria |
| HTML file edited the last week | name: *.htm,*.css date: < 1 week |
| MP3 files larger than 30 mb | name: *.mp3 size: > 30 mb |
The Quick Filter Tool
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This is a tool for quickly viewing the files which match a given filename wildcard. Press Ctrl-F and input focus jumps to the edit control on the toolbar. Then type the first letters of a filename to match and FWB filters out the files matching the wildcard. |
| Wildcard | matches files |
| d | demos.txt, doc |
| *d | building.txt, doc, splendid.htm |
It’s like the * is added automatically at the tail of the given string. To match files containg the string, * must be put first manually.
The Filter Tool
This tool allows for just displaying the files matching a certain criteria. It’s the pulldown combo to the left of the Quick Filter tool in the image above.
The criterias used for file matching are those edited in the File Selection dialog above.
After selecting a filter name, FileWorkbench will re-scan the current directory and only show the ones matching.
Some special cases:
| Filter name | Matches |
| Default | Files visible by default in this OS (Windows: files without the hidden attribute, Unix: files with names not beginnging with .) |
| All | All files, no filtering at all |
| Selected | Show only files that are in the selected state |
The Selected filter is useul when keeping track of a few selected files among lots of files.