Search: ability to exclude directories & more

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BlueMM
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Aug 21, 2014 1:59 am

Search: ability to exclude directories & more

Post by BlueMM »

It would be great if there was a way to exclude directories from the search tool.

Example: Search all images between a date range, within the Pictures folder & recursively but exclude the "landscapes" sub-directory.

I imagine the implementation could be:
1. A new condition is available that adds the Path (or Folder or Directory), with criteria like other strings (is, is not, is any of, contains, does not contain, starts with).
-> Maybe a new criteria 'is not any of' would be useful for quickly listing multiple exclusions
2. A new UI introduced that is a directory tree where each directory has a checkbox next to it so you can exclude some directories but include deeper sub-directories.
-> this would be more powerful, as you can pick & choose multiple, spread out directories spanning all the storage media on the computer.

Also noticed a few other problems/suggestions.
A. When doing repeated searches, the previously selected directory is forgotten, I suggest it should default to the last used directory for that session.
B. There doesn't seem to be a way to search for multiple file types (eg. *.jpg,*.png).
-> Maybe the RegExp mode might help, but I can't find any documentation on using that mode (ideally some documentation would include some common examples).
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m.Th.
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Joined: Wed Aug 16, 2006 6:31 am
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Re: Search: ability to exclude directories & more

Post by m.Th. »

BlueMM wrote:It would be great if there was a way to exclude directories from the search tool.

Example: Search all images between a date range, within the Pictures folder & recursively but exclude the "landscapes" sub-directory.

I imagine the implementation could be:
1. A new condition is available that adds the Path (or Folder or Directory), with criteria like other strings (is, is not, is any of, contains, does not contain, starts with).
-> Maybe a new criteria 'is not any of' would be useful for quickly listing multiple exclusions
This one!
It is easy to implement eg. 'does not contain' {\Landscapes\}

Ok. one would argue that the engine would anyway scan the folder(s) but this is superfast. The slow thing is actually retrieval of images.

2. A new UI introduced that is a directory tree where each directory has a checkbox next to it so you can exclude some directories but include deeper sub-directories.
-> this would be more powerful, as you can pick & choose multiple, spread out directories spanning all the storage media on the computer.

Also noticed a few other problems/suggestions.
A. When doing repeated searches, the previously selected directory is forgotten, I suggest it should default to the last used directory for that session.
I think that it takes the current dir, even if on the network sometimes it has problems. But I think that a button saying {Put the last searched dir} or even better a history list will be nice.

B. There doesn't seem to be a way to search for multiple file types (eg. *.jpg,*.png).
-> Maybe the RegExp mode might help, but I can't find any documentation on using that mode (ideally some documentation would include some common examples).
Try searching for * and...

1. ...use RegEx.

For RegExp see, for example, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression (scroll down for wildcards - called in RegEx metacharacters - & examples)

- AND/OR -

2. ...use Format criteria. Add as many formats as you like but be sure to check "Match ANY of the following conditions".
m. Th.

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