empty: (broken?)

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vfatica
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu May 21, 2015 7:06 pm

empty: (broken?)

Post by vfatica »

The search docs say the search specification "empty:" will "Search for empty folders". In my experience, it finds folders with no subfolders (empty or not). This is easy to see in the Everything search window. Enter "empty:" (no quotes) as the search spec ... scroll down the "Name" column to find several folders named "en-US". Nearly all of them contain files.
therube
Posts: 4977
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: empty: (broken?)

Post by therube »

You have to open the Folder name as shown in the Name field, not the Folder shown in the Path field.

The former will be empty, the latter may not be.
therube
Posts: 4977
Joined: Thu Sep 03, 2009 6:48 pm

Re: empty: (broken?)

Post by therube »

Note the caveat having to do with hard links: http://www.voidtools.com/forum/viewtopi ... 668#p12668
vfatica
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu May 21, 2015 7:06 pm

Re: empty: (broken?)

Post by vfatica »

therube wrote:You have to open the Folder name as shown in the Name field, not the Folder shown in the Path field.

The former will be empty, the latter may not be.
That's what I'm doing, with "empty:" as search criterion, I get, among other things, 82 objects in the "Name" column called "en-US". I've opened 10-20 of them and they're not empty. There are plenty of others.
OK, after a lot of investigation ... every file in those "en-US" folders is a hard link, and, apparently, Everything chooses index a file with more than one hard link only once (and that, rather arbitrarily). To test this ...
I created g:\z1\ and g:\z1\greeting.txt
I created g:\z2\ and g:\z2\greeting.txt (a hard link to g:\z1\greeting.txt)
Everything reported g:\z2\ as empty.
Then I deleted g:\z1\greeting.txt ...
... and created g:\z1\greeting.txt (a hard link to g:\z2\greeting.txt)
[Yes that can be done since hard links are indistinguishable (the original instance of the file its first hard link) and the file itself continues to exist until the last of its hard links is deleted.]
Everything continued to report g:\z2\ as empty.
IMHO, if the same file appears in many folders, Everything should show that. Otherwise, the notion of what's where becomes useless. A file with more than one hard link really is in more than one directory, with none of those directories having any special status.
void
Developer
Posts: 16751
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: empty: (broken?)

Post by void »

empty: will find folders that are empty in the Everything index.
They may not actually be empty on disk.

This may occur if you exclude files, or as therube mentioned if they contain hardlinks.

Please confirm folders are empty with File -> Properties (Alt + Enter) before deleting them.
vfatica
Posts: 50
Joined: Thu May 21, 2015 7:06 pm

Re: empty: (broken?)

Post by vfatica »

void wrote:empty: will find folders that are empty in the Everything index.
They may not actually be empty on disk.

This may occur if you exclude files, or as therube mentioned if they contain hardlinks.

Please confirm folders are empty with File -> Properties (Alt + Enter) before deleting them.
A hard link **IS** a file. Why can't Everything show all the hard links instead of only one?
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