This program is useful for those of you who have many Hotline files. I got sick of manually wading through over 250 Hotline files just to find that only 75 of them were actually unique.
How to use the program:
When you launch the program for the first time, the preferences window will appear. Moving the mouse cursor over any of the buttons or edit fields in the window will give you information about its function. When you're done choosing your options, click save or hit return to have the preferences saved to disk. Select New from the File menu. Depending on your selected options, you will either get an open file dialog box or a scan of your startup volume will begin. If it prompts you to select a file (it's actually looking for a folder to start scanning from) select a file from the folder you want it to start scanning from. The program will do the rest. After the scan, a folder in your startup volume's root directory called "Analyzed HL Files" will contain the sorted files.
Startup Drive:Analyzed HL Files:Unique (folder) <---- contains the good (unique) files
New Features In v1.5ß:
Everything has changed since the previous release. 1.5ß is a complete re-write with many enhancements to the original program.
The program can now search nested folders.
A much cleaner Macintosh interface. It no longer jumps you right into the open file dialog when launched.
When it scans for files, it copies (or moves) the files first instead of during the comparison.
A bunch of new preferences were written in, some of which include:
a preference to Copy or Move files that are found
an option to scan your entire startup volume for applicable files
an optional number of levels to scan (ie. how many nested folders should it search for files)
an option on how to handle duplicate filenames (either make it a unique filename or just
replace what is already there.)
an option to rename all of the unique files to their respective IP addresses for easy
identification (the filename would be the server's IP address it connects to.)
Known Bugs in v1.5ß:
I haven't done any testing to see if it works when the folder you select is on a drive other than your startup drive
I haven't done any network testing
Very few system checks (ie. hard drive space, memory, ROM versions etc.)
Future Plans:
Fix all known bugs.
Possibly add more interface improvements such as creating a list of all found files and allowing the user to choose the fate of each file given several options and information about them. <--- 2% chance this will be implemented.
You should be able to select folders instead of files in the open dialog box. <--- 60% chance.
Possibly add support for drag & drop (so you could drag a folder or drive to the app and have it scan its contents based on the user defined preferences.) <--- 50% chance.
Possibly add support for exclusion of certain folders before searching. <--- 30% chance.
Pre-calculate the number of comparisons it's going to do and display a progress bar so you know how far it has to go. <--- 70% chance.
In the next release, you will be able to create an updatable database of your IPs <--- 99% chance.
Register Creator with Apple (hopefully I picked a unique one!)
Speed the damn thing up.
The program needs an Icon damn it!
Program Requirements:
Most 680x0s or Power Macs should be just fine.
533Mhz Exponential X704 recommended.
System 7.0 or later, tested under System 7.6 and works fine.
ROMs greater than a Mac Plus!
Notes:
I made the program so it is able to work with any amount of Hotline files you may have. Unfortunately, this is also the program's main drawback. To work with an unlimited (and undefined) amount of files (or Hotline connection IPs), the data collected from all the files couldn't be stored into arrays, because they could become to large to fit into memory. Instead, it only holds two IPs in memory at a time (the original IP and the IP it's being compared to) and must continually access the hard drive to get the next IP. On top of that, it must make a very large amount of comparisons. To do a comparison on, say, 8 files, it has to perform 28 comparisons (if they all happened to be unique and none of them got removed during the comparison.) Adding one more file (for a total of nine), 8 more comparisons are needed. OK, so now say you have 100 files to compare. 4950 comparisons, adding one more would increase it to 5049. You get the idea. Anyway, that's why it may seem a little slow. Fortunately for us, all we have to do is sit back, relax (or go have a coffee) and when you get back, it'll be all done and sorted into neat little piles.
Price:
Compress your "Unique" folder and upload it to me...heh.
Contacting Me:
You'll find me on IRC, Hotline and FC. I'm Cardanine.
