Extending Selection Capabilities
When handling subfolders during file operations, traditional file-managers assumes that when we select a subfolder, we want all of it's contents to take part in a file operation. This is often good, but sometimes it's not what we need.
Example
Suppose that we've been working with a project containing JPEG, GIF and BMP images, Word documents, Java source-code and text files among other file types. The programs we've been using in the project have produced many intermediate and temporary files which are of interest only to other programs. Now, say we'd like to send the images of the project to a friend. How do sort out the images from the rest of the files?
With Probe, this is done through the concept of 'Recursive Selections'. The idea is that we not only select files in the topmost folder of a file operation, but also in it's subfolders, and their subfolders in turn. We can do this manually, selecting each file with the mouse, or with the keyboard. Even better is to have Probe do the repetitive work of sorting out all image files and selecting them (fig 1).
Fig 1: Using wildcard selections in the Advanced Selection dialog
Suppose we'd like to select all image files, in all subfolders of our project. This is accomplished by setting the option 'Perform selection in all subfolders' in fig 2.
Fig 2: Choosing to recursively select image files
After performing the selection, we make sure that subfolder handling is set to 'Recursive selection' (fig 3).
Fig 3: Activating 'Recursive Selections'
To make sure that only image type files will be part of the file operation, we use the 'Selection Information' function, which presents detailed information on the currently selected files. It also provide us with a browsable tree, which only contains the selected files.
Fig 4: Inspecting the current selection, through the F9 function
In fig 4, totally 210 + 8 = 218 image files were found. Indeed, it would have been a boring and error prone task, finding and copying these 218 files manually. Note that the folder structure, and each file of the selection, is visualized in the tree control to the right in fig 4.
Now, we're ready to do our file operation. If we want to compress the images into a single ZIP file, we use Probe to create the ZIP file, and then simply copy the current selection there. Now we can go ahead, emailing the images as a single compressed file.