IDEA:Something that will tell you wether a folder is empty or not.

[fantum]

As simple as this seems, I can't find a prog that will simply tell you if a folder is empty or if it contains something.  I would like to be able to punch in a hot key to run the prog, and it could simply say folder not empty or folder empty.  Any ideas?  Thnx

[mouser]

this isnt a direct answer to your question, but Directory Opus (a very expensive replacement for windows explorer), has a very nice feature that calculates folder contents sizes, and is wonderful for the kind of thing you are asking, allowing you to see at a glace what folders have stuff in them and how much..

there are some free file explorer replacements, maybe one of them has something similar?

[tenseiken]

Yeah, Directory Opus has this, but to be honest, it's one of the things that Xplorer² does better.

[fantum]

Thank you for the suggestions.  I will try those. 

[nudone]

again, i'm not going to be of the greatest help but i'm sure that i've seen one or two little apps that claimed to monitor and report whether a folder contained anything or not.

they might not have strictly monitored if the folder was empty. i think they observed if new files had been placed in the folder - would that be enough.

if i can find them i'll let you know but they must have been things i've seen over at shellcity.net or nonags.com.

[mouser]

well there are a bunch of apps to monitor specific directories and do stuff when a file appears in them, either alert you or process name in some way.

but i read the question as being that fantum was browsing directories in explorer and wanted to know if folders were empty without navigating into them.

directory opus is nice about that.

tenseiken says xplorer^2 does it better than dir opus.. i didnt know that.  tenseiken how is it better?

[tenseiken]

I assumed the same thing as you did, mouser.  Anyway, I think it's better because in Directory Opus, you have the option of having it scan the size of each folder all the time, or by hovering your mouse over a folder for a moment.  In Xplorer², you just hit a hotkey and it does it for you.  I like that more because this isn't a feature I tend to use very often, but when I do, I usually want to see the size of all the subfolders, and I don't want to hover my mouse over each item until it shows up, nor do I want to hunt through the huge options panel for it.

[mouser]

well it sounds like xplorer does precisely what fantum wanted.

[skrommel]

  IsEmpty - Check if a folder is empty

Change the folder= in the settings below to the folder you want to check.
Change the countfolders= to 0 to ignore folders in the check.

Download and install AutoHotKey from www.autohotkey.com. Save the script as IsEmpty.ahk and doubleclick to run.

Skrommel

[Select]

;IsEmpty.ahk
; Check if a folder is empty
;Skrommel @2005

;Settings
folder=C:\Temp
countfolders=1


;Script
counter=0
Loop,%folder%\*.*,%countfolders%
  counter+=1
If counter=0
  MsgBox,Folder %folder% is empty.
Else
  MsgBox,Folder %folder% is NOT empty.
Exit

[skywalka]

http://foldersize.sourceforge.net/

[mouser]

nice find skywalla -

foldersize looks great (assuming you don't have this feature in your file explorer already).

seeing folder sizes is one of my favorite things missing from normal windows explorer - it really is *extremely* useful.