Release 9.50



XYplorer 9.50 has been released on 06-Sep-2010. Here's a quick introduction to the main new features:

Select Items. The new interface "Select Items..." (in menu Edit | Select) lets you select multiple items in the current file list by way of a freely editable list of item names -- a highly useful feature as is shown in the use case below.

Go to System32 and this will select a bunch of files with a single click.


The interface is smart enough to handle a lot of different input formats. These are the rules and possibilities for such a list of names:

One item name per line.
Empty lines are allowed and ignored.
Full paths are allowed in the list and will be ignored at the matching.
Encoded URLs will be decoded (%20 is decoded to space, etc.).
URL queries (e.g. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5502&p=51346) are allowed and ignored at the matching.
The sequence of the item names does not matter.
Leading and trailing spaces around each name are allowed and ignored.
Matching is case-insensitive (A=a), so you can state the names with wrong capitalization and still have them selected.
XY native and environment variables are allowed (though rarely useful here, I think).
Ignore extensions: If checked then matching is done only against the base of the given item names, and one item name can potentially generate any number of selections in the List. The state of the checkbox is remembered within the session.
The last used list is remembered within the session.

So, for example, the following item names would all select the file "Arial Unicode MS.php" in the current list:

Arial Unicode MS.php
c:\files\A\Arial Unicode MS.php
\\192.168.0.2\Fonts\Arial Unicode MS.php
file:///c:/files/A/Arial Unicode MS.php
http://www.sofontes.com.br/files/A/Arial Unicode MS.php
http://www.sofontes.com.br/files/A/Arial%20Unicode%20MS.php
Arial Unicode MS.php?f=3&t=5502&p=51346

Use Case: This interface enables you to perform a potentially large, complex, and not-rule-based multiple selection in a very easy and convenient way. There is no other way to do what Select Items... can do for you. Here's an example: Say you are going to overwrite 250 files in a folder of 5,000 files with newer versions. But you'd like to backup the original versions first. How will you grab those 250 out of the 5,000 without spending a tedious time with manual selection? Using Select Items... this is a snap: Go to the folder with the 250 new items and copy their names the clipboard (Ctrl+Shift+P); then go to the folder with the 5,000 items, click Select Items..., paste the 250 names into the text box, and click OK; all original items about to be overwritten are selected and ready for backup! This will take you less than 10 seconds.

Selection Filter. The Selection Filter (in menu Edit | Select) now can be limited to select only files or only folders.

You can restrict the selections to files or folders by attaching one of the following prefixes to the pattern:

  *:          Select files only
  \:          Select folders only

Examples:
  new*        Select all items starting with "new"
  *:>new*     Select all files starting with "new"
  \:>new*     Select all folders starting with "new"

It also works with RegExp:
  >^new       Select all items starting with "new"      
  *:>^new     Select all files starting with "new"
  \:>^new     Select all folders starting with "new"

The prefix must precede any other prefix:
  *:!>^new     Select all files NOT starting with "new"
  *:!type:doc  Select all files where the Type does NOT 
                contain the string "doc"
Selection Filter. When using the Selection Filter (in menu Edit | Select), now you can add to or remove from the current selections very easily:
Hold CTRL while clicking OK in the Selection Filter dialog
= Add matches to the current selections.
Hold SHIFT while clicking OK in the Selection Filter dialog
= Remove matches from the current selections.
DOS commands. DOS commands (that you can feed through the Address Bar) now support XY native variables and Environment variables.

Examples:

  !dir "%temp%" /p        directory listing of the TEMP
                           folder; DOS box stays visible
  !!regsvr32 "<curitem>"  register the current item
  !!regsvr32 <selitems>   register all selected items
Titlebar. Now you can define the layout of the main window's titlebar. This can be done in menu Tools | Configuration... | Templates.
Scripting. Now you can run a script directly from the command line. (Pro Edition Only)

The switch is /script=[script resource], where [script resource] can be:

1) The path to a script file (commonly called *.xys). The file spec is resolved as in the script command load, so you can skip the XYS extension. You can also skip the path if the XYS file is located in the default scripts folder. For example

XYplorer.exe /script=test

would run the file <xyscripts>\test.xys on startup. If the path contains spaces it must be quoted:

XYplorer.exe /script="C:\Zen\test one.xys"

2) A script. It must be preceded by ::, and it must not contain double quotes or other characters that might lead to problems when parsing the command line. For example

XYplorer.exe /script="::msg 'Welcome to XY!';"

Note the double quotes surrounding the whole argument which are needed because of the spaces in the script line.