Re: [gcmd-dev] Advanced renaming - recursive mode

[Piotr Eljasiak]

> (Do i really need to write any more ? ;)
> 
> Maybe one would wonder where that would be useful at all.
> Here's my 'production' example case.
> 
> I use hardlinks e.g. for collection folders dedicated to speed up creating 
> slide presentations or websites. Without touching the originals which are 
> already sorted after date and location.
> Or generally, hardlinking saves diskspace with file redundancy when using 
> filesystem like a  database (which is after all what it's meant to be). 
> I deal with about 10G (about 10,000 files)  of still images by now and store 
> 3 date versions of full backup on external USB smart drive. It's not really 
> about disk space but merely about speed -  USB 2.0 is damm slow with that. 
> It's the second backup system, the first one is on inbuilt second HD which is 
> much faster. But i need the external drive on travels so i don't need to 
> transfer stuff to my laptop. Firewire was no option - too expensive :|
> 
> Now symlinking would not work correctly on external drives of course.
> I could hardcopy them. But i already symlinks for folders or files i don't 
> want to backup.
> For example, since i'm not very experienced in configuring Samba servers, 
> there's a dedicated Samba tree of symlink folders - it was the easiest way to 
> assure there's no outbreak, and to have the most simple overview, and easy 
> adding/removing stuff. 
> 
> In case i like to delete a file completely i can see by filename where it was 
> placed originally, 
> because i use to mark symlinks with a trailing "=" and hardlinks with 
> trailing "==".
> 
> Sometimes i batch a set of resampled (rescaled/enhanced) versions as real 
> copies.
> They are placed in another dedicated folder tree. 
> That's the situation where i need to rename the files recursively: Append 
> some generic marker like 'rmx' for remixed, and remove any trailing "=". I 
> could do that in the batch processing, of course.
> But OTOH it's nearly already there, in gcmd advrename...we would just need 
> the recursive mode switch button =)
> 
> I'm sure you can find more usage cases, easily.

advrename tool works on file selection only and it means that mass
renaming is applied both to files and dirs using the same rules. I
wouldn't want to change it in the way you propose (as it would be
misleading for user - which file to rename in subdir?).

The solution to your problem is to get (somehow ;o) selected files in
subdirs and then use advrename as usual... This is exactly the idea of
vfolder which was discussed last year. I do plan to implement it, but
that may take a while ;o)

As a workaround we can think about enabling some file operations on the
list resulting from file searching (which is performed on subdirs
too...). What about it?

Piotr