Messages

1

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 11:47 PM »

I guess it took somewhat longer than 5  but I had to find the right utility to produce a recursive directory list...

Anyway, here it is!

2

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 10:20 PM »

Sure, gimme 5...

3

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 10:07 PM »

That will be awesome! Thank you.

Heh, 36! My daughter is 34 and my son is 32 so that gives you a clue how old I am (I'm 62   !)

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing what AHK can do...

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Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 08:23 PM »

Hi Skwire,

It seems that FileSieve crashes when faced with the 293,717 files  that I have (and I only pointed it to the "fj" subset, "ma" has another 241,098) so, I guess, your mission, should you choose to accept it sir, is to demonstrate how AHK can do the job!

BTW, FWIW in FileSieve's documentation it says: In this version, it is not currently possible for you to create your own method. It may be possible in a later version which will either provide scripting or plugin support to provide you with this functionality.

5

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 07:26 PM »

Now you've got me interested in AutoHotKey! It seems like it would, with some learning, enable me to automate a lot of the repetitive things I do.

I don't know how old you are so I don't know how much of what I am about to say will make any sense but, here goes:

I studied programming waaaay back in the 70's (BASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN on an NCR mini coding onto 80-column  punch-cards!) which, while they are certainly not current languages, should give me some structural guidelines. I've also coded in dBase IV and similar (Foxbase etc.) and in  VBasic. In fact, I ran the very first BBS here in town on a 300 baud dialup modem using a Z80 computer running the entire system in interpreted BASIC!

If you were to make up this app for me, would you provide it in AHK source or is that too much to hope for? I'd love to be able to learn from a master!

I've been fiddling with FileSieve and it is a lot less intuitive than I would have hoped, and it's not helped by the almost complete lack of documentation other than a few simple examples in a .chm file.

What would it take to convince you to complete the project for me  ?

6

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 05:50 PM »

Wow! All I can say so far is that it looks about a million times more intuitive than FileSieve!

Out of curiosity, what language are you using to write it?

7

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 05:31 PM »

Nope, haven't come across that one before, and I searched the heck out of the web at the time, but I guess I just didn't hit the right search phrase...

Certainly looks interesting, and probably can do the job, but because of its sophistication it will take some playing with to ascertain whether it will or won't be able to do the sort. I'll play with it a bit and let you know... What really appeals to me is that it supports multiple input directories.

Thanks for the heads-up!

8

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 04:46 PM »

Hey, no worries, I was just curious is all... 

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Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 11, 2010, 12:18 PM »

Hi Skwire,

I was just wondering where we were at with the "project" as it's been over a week and I hadn't heard back from you.

Sincerely,

Mike

10

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 05, 2010, 04:18 PM »

Hi Skwire,

I appreciate your dilemma, and I think your solution #3 is the best where you allow me to put in the search criteria in the form of a wild-card string. That wouldn't bother me at all as there are really only the two naming conventions (3 group and 4 group) but at least that way any other eventuality is easily handled.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Mike

11

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 04, 2010, 09:37 PM »

OK, I've tried to give you some sense of the file naming conventions which are reasonably strict as long as you appreciate that they will always start with a 2 or 3-letter or number group, then an underscore, then a 2 or 3 letter designator (typically but no hard and fast rule) then an underscore and some more letters and/or numbers and perhaps another underscore or hyphen and some more letters or numbers but this last part is not relevant to the project.

So what we need to create is the following structure:

root (could be anywhere)
then the first grouping creates a major subdir named after it (in the examples shown FJ or MA)
then subdirs off those based on the next grouping
then subdirs off that based on third grouping
then all the files that fit that pattern into those dirs so only three levels deep

Basically Photographer then Model then Project then Image Number

I hope you appreciate that I need an automatic process because (currently) there are 21,128 filers (and growing) so any needed manual intervention makes it a very laborious process indeed!

I forgot to ask you whether this process can be recursive because currently I have a mess of files in this monster dir and (more recently) some measure of subdirs off the monster dir named with project names and their contents need to be processed according to the overall rules, so you don't have to care what the dirs are named, just enter and process (I know, I'm not asking for much...)

I hope this makes it clear?

Mike

12

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 04, 2010, 11:56 AM »

Hi skwire,

I checked out Moveout and it is indeed closer than much else I have found other than perhaps RoboBasket whose author says it can do the job. He said (In your case you can use the "Move to" action and check the "sort into subfolder" option , insert the "name.part2"  substring into the text box. ), but it certainly isn't intuitive as to why I need to do what he said (nowhere is defined what the name, name.part1, name.part2, name.part3, name.lastpart substrings refer to or even where or how one can define them). The software should (if it's designed properly) not need a manual for all but the intellectually challenged  ) or it isn't written well enough, IMHO.

MoveOut (as far as I can see) lacks the ability to create the necessary sub-folders and then move the files that meet the wildcard criteria into the self-named newly-created folders.

Did I miss something?

Mike

13

Finished Programs / Re: IDEA: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 03, 2010, 10:55 PM »

Yes they are.

14

Finished Programs / DONE: Organize files into folders based on flename wildcard parsing

« on: March 03, 2010, 09:54 PM »

I am looking for a very specific organizational ability, namely this:

I have a huge directory (51GB and growing) of images (but I wouldn't want the solution to be image-file specific).

I need to parse the filenames in this directory using standard grep / wildcard rules and then create a series of file folders labeled as per the parsing rule and move all matching files into that subfolder. So for example, if I had a range of files called

BobsPhoto_ABC_0001.jpg    through    BobsPhoto_ABC_0251.jpg

and then similar files but for different names with varying numbers of files, thus

BobsPhoto_AAB_0001.jpg    through    BobsPhoto_AAB_0147.jpg
BobsPhoto_BFG_0011.jpg    through    BobsPhoto_BFG_0025.jpg
BobsPhoto_XMC_0009.jpg    through    BobsPhoto_XMC_4252.jpg
etc.

I would like all the ABC files in the .\ABC folder, all the AAB files in the .\AAB folder etc. or wherever I specified the folders should go.

In an absolutely perfect world there would be a csv file containing

'ABC','Smith, Mary'
'AAC','Brown, Joan"
etc.

and it would create the destination directories according to those rules (if the csv file is present, otherwise name the directories ABC, AAC etc)

If someone knows of a readily available solution (preferably freeware! ) I'd love to hear about it. All my Googling has produced numerous solutions, none of which do quite what I want.