good addition to find and run robot or not?

[Saturday24]

I've worked up a screenshot of what I think would make find and run robot a bit more helpful to me..... does anyone else think it would save them time too? Thanks for your feedback.
[attach]

[wjamoe]

Hi, the functionality of the buttons is already present, you can right-click the filename, select
  Shell Context Menu .. to open it, delete it, "open with" dialog if you don't want to use the default program
or select
  Properties ..

if you want to select a program to open the file, you can also try portable extension warlock (PEW)
by hamradio Donationcoder NANY 2012 (it  requires .NET v4)
  http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=27928.0
review at freewaregenius.com
  http://www.freewaregenius.com/create-temporary-file-associations-with-portable-extension-warlock/

[MilesAhead]

Hmm, it's too bad Vista and W7 don't have the Edit and Open shell extension settings the way XP had. I could see the option to display the buttons being handy if the search list item was selected.  I think it would slow things down too much to fetch the associated apps of everything in the list.  But once you click one to select it, should just be a registry look-up. Or maybe gist for an independent 3rd party hotkey thing that could pop up a gui with buttons for each appropriate function. I don't know if registry is set up for that after XP though.

It might be worth a search on AHK forum or some of the freeware sites to see if a hotkey for that already exists. If the complete path can be determined from a clipboard copy out of FARR then it's a matter of how much hassle it is to determine "default program" functions vs XP Open/Edit associations. But there might be something out there that can do it already.

edit: this post shows a start of pulling it from Explorer and using "custom" file associations from an .ini file. Could probably do something copying to clipboard off of FARR. Trouble with these type of things is some APIs like FindExecutable() are pretty much broken. Looks like a lot of Registry sifting.

[daddydave]

You can also sort of override the default application using the "dosearch +alias" and a regex.

For example, if I want to launch a python file in Notepad2 instead of run it in Python,  I can just add 2 slashes to the end of it (aliases in FARR alias export format below):

Code: (text)

1000>>>notepad2>->Notepad2 - $$1 | C:\Program Files\Notepad2\Notepad2.exe "$$1"
1000>>>notepad2_dosearch>->dosearch +notepad2 $$1>+>^(.*)//$

The problem is the display template part before the vertical bar "Notepad2 - $$1 " seems to be ignored, so I'm launching blindly. I'd like to see Notepad2 - filename.py in the results so I am 100% sure of what's going to happen.  (I've also tried putting "Notepad2 - $$1 |" in the notepad2_dosearch line.)

So I have a more modest (I think) request to make the display templates work even with dosearch. I'm sure it's more complicated than it sounds, but that would be handy.

(Note: I got the idea of this technique from the first part of this post )

EDIT: There may be a way to do the same using ++ in the alias action - haven't figured out how yet.

EDIT 2: I'm only getting started with the advanced stuff, but I wonder if there is a way to use restartsearch to make a menu prepending different appllications to the file in search results.

[wjamoe]

The layout may be a little  different , but I solved this problem in NANY 2016.

Please check here: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=41913.msg394054#msg394054

You can open any file in different programs using one user defined alias.

It can show a list of multiple programs depending on the extension of any file.

The list of programs appears when you append <space><dot> to the file name in the search field.


you can also define a program like notepad to open any file.

[Saturday24]

The layout may be a little  different , but I solved this problem in NANY 2016.

Please check here: http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=41913.msg394054#msg394054

You can open any file in different programs using one user defined alias.

It can show a list of multiple programs depending on the extension of any file.

The list of programs appears when you append <space><dot> to the file name in the search field.


you can also define a program like notepad to open any file.

Thank you for this suggestion… Evidently I missed the notification of your response a couple years ago…  I checked at the link that you provided but did not see a downloadable plug-in… Is this a plug-in or just some methods for tweaking the aliases? Has anybody done a little video to watch alias/regular expression beginners through this type of thing?

Thanks very much for any suggestions.

[Nod5]

Is this a plug-in or just some methods for tweaking the aliases?

It's an alias. Here is a shorter instruction on how to set it up.

Begin to create a new alias and enter these details:

alias name: file extension menu

regex pattern: ^((.+)\\(.+)\.(\S+))\s+\.(.*)$

regex result filter: $$5 $$4

results:
[Enter] run default prog for -file.$$4 | shellexe $$1
[Enter]  VLC (mkv;avi;mp4) | %programfiles%\vlc\vlc.exe "$$1"
[Enter] / IRFANview -file.$$4 | %programfiles%\irfanview\i_view32.exe "$$1"
[Enter] notepad npp -file.$$4 | c:\windows\notepad.exe "$$1"

Screenshot


Note: You can pick and choose which results lines you want to use from the rightmost column in the largest table in this post
https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=41913.msg394054#msg394054
Or create your own using the same pattern.

Once set up use it this way
- Do a regular FARR search.
- Navigate down into the results window and select the file you want to operate on.
- Press Right Arrow Key to fill the FARR search box with the full path to the selected file.
- Press Space followed by . (period).

The FARR results should now list the different actions you can take on the file. Here is how that looks in my FARR.


edit: you can filter the results list of actions by continuing to type characters exclusive to one of the results lines. For example type npp to only show the open with Notepad action.

At least the above steps is how I think it is meant to be used, from a very quick test. I don't use it myself.

You know, this got me thinking I could create an AutoHotkey helper script that does something similar but which also autofilters and ranks the actions based on file extension, parent folder etcetera. A tiny FARR for choosing what action to take on a FARR result, sort of.

[Saturday24]

Thanks very much for the detailed instructions!