Sort time warning threshold change required...

[gutberle]

David,

even when I try to sort a list of only 2,300 items, Everything asks me if I really want to do this as "gathering and sorting" this data could take several minutes. If I confirm with OK it comes back with sorted results within a fraction of a second to a max of ~1 second. Not exactly taxing, right?

I therefore tried this on all files on one of my computers (>300,000) and Everything turned out to sort for date/time at a rate exceeding >45,000/minute. This speed does not apply to lower numbers of files as ~40,000 files typically takes ~9 seconds and thus give a search speed of >260,000/minute. So the above >45,000 for a large set seems to be a range where efficiency is decreasing (small surprise) and thus more or less a lower bound that this message appearing or not could be based upon.

Given that even a really large number of files sorts at a rate of >45,000/minute, this essentially useful warning message should be given from a much larger list size onward, more like ~100,000 files in the list or so.

Kind regards,
Ingmar

[void]

You can change the sort threshold in the Everything.ini file.

To change the threshold:

• Exit "Everything".
• Open the Everything.ini file.
• Add the following line to the end of the ini file:

  Code: Select all

  large_sort_threshold=1000

  where 1000 is the threshold.
• Restart "Everything".

You can also disable the threshold warning message.
To disable the threshold warning message:

• In "Everything", from the Tools menu, click Options.
• Click the View tab.
• From the Advanced settings, General folder, check Confirm Large Sort.
• Click OK.

I am considering removing the message for sorting by path..

[gutberle]

I don't think that removing the warning message would be good, because there CAN be situations where even sorting for the path can indeed take a long time, at least given the appropriate number of files...

Also, while it is good to know that one can set the threshold and disable the warning (thanks for that), I would still say that the default value of 1000 is inappropriate given that sorting for 1000 entries takes next to no time at all. I would therefore suggest that the installation default should be changed from 1000 to something much more befitting such as 100,000 or possibly even higher.

Regards,
Ingmar

[daspud]

1000 entries used to take a longer to sort out, but the sorts for date/time or size have been optimized.

It really depends on the speed of the machine and the disks. Perhaps a formula incorporating the speed of the computer, the number of disk drives, the amount of ram and the phase of the moon would work better?

I do agree that with the new sort 1,000 is too low. Do I hear 12,500?

[Otter]

Yeah, here's another suggestion. Why not sort in background and just leave the user type anything? No need to make it like a blockaded operation. Just to type anything, and even if finding files and sorting them in the list isn't possible parallelly; the user thinks over and edits the quiery - later it will be applied.

And at least – not display the popup. Rather status bar state "sorting", an estimate how much part of it completed, and a button on the bar, to stop anytime.

Kind of, even a rough current estimate is better than thinking when to popup a window.


And also, to that same matter.... Even a big list of files (admit 10000) while slowly sorting, gets depicted and accessible quickly, from start to end. So i assume it could be quickly sorted if as strings, not on the disk. Maybe make a pure in-list sort available, or do a string sort before, and then in background the file system sort follows.