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Windows Explorer "File manager" Alternative
kunkel321:
Apparently I "collect" file managers, because over the years I've purchased, xplorer2, Total Commander, XYplorer, and DirectoryOpus. As others have said, DO is probably the most feature-rich. Personally, my go-to usually falls back to XYplorer. Do note that, XY is natively portable. With DO, you can buy a portable version, but it will be tied to a particular usb stick.
wraith808:
Apparently I "collect" file managers, because over the years I've purchased, xplorer2, Total Commander, XYplorer, and DirectoryOpus. As others have said, DO is probably the most feature-rich. Personally, my go-to usually falls back to XYplorer. Do note that, XY is natively portable. With DO, you can buy a portable version, but it will be tied to a particular usb stick.
-kunkel321 (February 04, 2021, 09:14 AM)
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I have all of those except Total Commander, but I replaced that with Altap Salamander. I use DO whenever possible on my primary machines, and XYPlorer portable everywhere else.
sphere:
A file manager really isn't the optimum tool to manage indexes.
-Shades (February 04, 2021, 01:23 AM)
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@shades, thank you. Everything you say makes sense. And I certainly want the file manager to be as nimble as possible. I think my looking for those added features comes from a false impression that I hade developed that, file managers had moved in this direction. Being the all in one tool.
Directory Opus and Total Commander allow for scripting, so you can create your own options/buttons to have access to indexed content. With the other tools in the set you consider, I'm not sure if scripting is even an option.
-Shades (February 04, 2021, 01:23 AM)
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I almost included scripting in my list. I knew that Directory Opus and Total Commander had these functions. I thought that some of the others on my list did as well. Actually it looks like multicommander has some scripting http://forum.multicommander.com/forum/index.php/board,7.0.htmlhttp://forum.multicommander.com/forum/index.php/board,7.0.html
Its features do look impressive. Thanks for the link to the forum. That is helpful. As ana side, there are two different searches on the forum page. Depending on what search you use it asks for a login.
** edit 2 **
Diffing file content is also out of the scope from any file manager. While it may sound logical that a file manager should be able to do diff file content, diffing file content is actually very difficult to do. Sure, very basic text files are not too big of a deal. ..... <snipe> Haven't seen much improvement with this over the years in software like Beyond Compare, ExamDiff Pro or WinMerge (free). And this is dedicated software, made by knowledgeable people for their living. The maintainer(s) from file managers don't have that expertise, so whatever diff capability they mange to add to their file manager, it will be a pretty poor implementation. And you'll likely just go back to the tool you always have been using to do diffs. Resulting in unnecessary cruft inside the file manager.
-Shades (February 04, 2021, 01:23 AM)
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Recently I have had to go though alot of files. The ability to compare and immediately see the differences between files, specifically when they share the same or similar name would be greatly beneficial. I do not mind using a different application, but being able to identify the differences in the file manager- before moving would be great. Being able to move the files for a directory, to later analyze using a file compare application would also work. This is one reason why preserving the create date is important. It provides some important information when determining what to do with the file.
sphere:
#2 (comparing files) you don't specify the criteria. Dopus offers a bit comparison
-tomos (February 04, 2021, 02:47 AM)
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@tomos There are a number of criteria. Most commonly I need to do the following:
A) Find duplicates of a single file across multiple external hard drives.
B) Compare different versions of the same or similar text file, PDF, open office document, Microsoft office document and spreadsheet. This is in order to determine what the most recent version of the file is. In some cases text from previous revisions is needed to be pulled and added to the most recent file.
4) Can index and include external hard drives and directories not currently connected to the system.
you don't mean index the contents of the files here, do you?
Same question for #3
-tomos (February 04, 2021, 02:47 AM)
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I actually did mean indexing the contents of the files withing the directory. But I understand that might require another tool. It seems that Windows indexing used to do a far better job than it does currently. Now I'm speaking from operating systems that have long been abandoned. I think that is one of the reasons why I felt like this was a possibility for third-party file manager.
sphere:
......I have all of those except Total Commander, but I replaced that with Altap Salamander. I use DO whenever possible on my primary machines, and XYPlorer portable everywhere else.
-wraith808 (February 04, 2021, 12:38 PM)
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@wraith thanks... What made you make the move from total Comander to atap salamander
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