Confused about File Lists "Monitor changes"

General discussion related to "Everything".
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JCN9801
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 27, 2014 5:05 am

Confused about File Lists "Monitor changes"

Post by JCN9801 »

I had a file in a filelist that needed to be renamed.
After renaming it was still listed in the filelist under the old name.
I must be assuming that "Monitor changes" means something else entirely.
And of course a filelist is a text file snapshot in time and not dynamic as I was assuming (???)

From this I deduce that the EFU needs to be re-created whenever there is a renaming, but since this file is a concatenation of 20+ specific sub-EFUs I need to first remove the larger one from File Lists, re-gen the smaller one, concatenate them together (again) and then re-add the new large one to File Lists. If I am not careful in this sequence, I will get duplicate entries all over the place.

How is this "Monitor changes" related to (or not) to the Folders option "Attempt to monitor changes" (which I read on the 2009 post and am still not sure I understand)?

Confused even more,
---JCN
void
Developer
Posts: 17157
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Confused about File Lists "Monitor changes"

Post by void »

Everything does not track filelist filename changes, only content changes.

For example, if you have C:\foo.efu in your Everything index and you generate a new C:\foo.efu, Everything will pick up the change and rescan your filelist.

For example, if you have C:\foo.efu in your Everything index and you rename C:\foo.efu to C:\foo.old.efu, Everything will do nothing.
Renaming a file to C:\foo.efu should cause Everything to detect a change to C:\foo.efu.

File list "Monitor changes" refers to tracking data changes to the physical file (FindFirstChangeNotification)

Folder "Monitor changes" refers to tracking new files, deleted files and modified files in a folder or subfolder (ReadDirectoryChanges).
JCN9801
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 27, 2014 5:05 am

Re: Confused about File Lists "Monitor changes"

Post by JCN9801 »

Okay, I think I understand the limitation - not quite how I wanted it to work.
There are many situations, say a song title that was misspelled in a download or on an MP3 CD, and needs a better, rename.
So maybe COPY foo.bar to new_foo.bar picks up this "name change"? Same content. Seems cumbersome.
Oh, not in a filelist (it's a static name/index)... never mind...

Okay so if I have 20 odd hard drives, all having drive letters.
And also NTFS mount points under P:\
It seems if I remove P:\ from the NTFS index and Force Rebuild, and add P:\ to Folders I wind up with duplicate hits.
(no file lists used here).
Can I assume that one of the hits is from the Folder match and another is from whatever drive letters hold the files (NTFS)?
So Folders do not seem particularly useful in my case. Not sure what they would be used for.

Would this resolve the renaming problem if I just used P:\ in Folders (monitor changes)and excluded all of the drive letters from the NTFS index?
I almost never search say G:\ for items of interest.
I guess the question is: Does monitor folder changes track this renaming?

I suppose I could write a batch file and use cli to generate new sub-EFUs (BLUES, JAZZ, C&W, POP, etc) which I then concatenate into a SPEC_EFU
and that is what I search against.

Perhaps this also explains why wildcards doe not work with filelists.
Ronnie Aldrich filelistfilename:PIANO_EFU works
but *Ronnie* filelistfilename:PIANO_EFU does not.

So close... I will think about this some more...
Thanks,
---JCN
void
Developer
Posts: 17157
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: Confused about File Lists "Monitor changes"

Post by void »

Can I assume that one of the hits is from the Folder match and another is from whatever drive letters hold the files (NTFS)?
Yes.
Currently there's no way to determine the file's index type. An index type column is on my TODO list.
Folder indexes are best used for network shares and non-NTFS volumes (exFat/Fat32).
Would this resolve the renaming problem if I just used P:\ in Folders (monitor changes)and excluded all of the drive letters from the NTFS index?
NTFS indexing offers the fastest and most reliable indexing.
Use NTFS indexing over Folder indexing where possible.
I guess the question is: Does monitor folder changes track this renaming?
Yes.
Everything can miss changes if you make too many in a small time frame. eg 100+ file renames in less than a second.
Perhaps this also explains why wildcards doe not work with filelists.
Ronnie Aldrich filelistfilename:PIANO_EFU works
but *Ronnie* filelistfilename:PIANO_EFU does not.
This should work, do you have Regex enabled from the Search menu? -If so, please try disabling regex.
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