Relative paths in file lists for optical media

[geofft]

Hi,

I’m super impressed with the speed and flexibility of Everything. I have a specific use case that is proving a little problematic - but I suspect it may be because I dont fully understand how Everything manages file lists.

The use case is as follows - we are in the process of going entirely paperless - scanning and archiving even our most important documents and then destroying them. This means we have to be particularly careful with producing backup archives. To do this we are creating 100Gb M Disk Blu Ray optical media with up to 20,000 pdf images per disk.

I’d like to use Everything to index them (produce emu files with a complete listing of all the files) and then put the portable version of Everything and the file list on the actual Blu Ray disk and therefore allow users of that file archive to quickly locate files on the disk. With 100Gb Blu ray M Disks this is very helpful!

The problem is that I’m producing the file lists on the desktop and even with the appropriate setting in the ini file Everything still produces emu files with full paths. I thought that if file_lists_relative_paths = 1 then those files should be created with relative paths?

All works as expected if I manually edit the emu files to replace the full path with relative paths before finalising the disk, but my impression was that this shouldn’t be necessary?

Am I missing something here? Any help would be gratefully received.

Thanks,

Geoff.

[void]

I recommend manually adjusting the paths to be relative.
Moving files or moving the file list can easily break relative paths.

file_list_relative_paths=1 works by removing the start of the paths for each file list item that match the start of the saved filename.


For example, if you are creating an EFU file of files from
D:\scans
and save your EFU file as
D:\Scans\my file list.efu

then D:\scans\ is removed from the path of each file list item.

If you save the file outside of D:\scans, then file_list_relative_paths will do nothing.


In other words, save your EFU file to the same location as the files that you added to your filelist.

[geofft]

Thanks - that’s helpful.

So -

If I have the files to be indexed in D:\preparation\scans and I create the EFU file in that directory and then create the file list, then will Everything strip out D:\preparation\scans when it creates the EFU file? In other words, will the EFU file list only contain the file list or - will the EFU file contain the full paths but they get removed when Everywhere reads the EFU (for example if the EFU is subsequently on the Blu Ray Disk)?

Thanks again for your help,

Cheers

Geoff.

[void]

If you create the file list from files in D:\preparation\scans and save the file list to D:\preparation\scans, then "D:\preparation\scans\" is removed from the start of the paths in the resulting file list on disk.

The start of the path is removed when you save the file list. (not when it is read)


If you save the file list to another location outside of D:\preparation\scans, then the full paths are left intact.

[geofft]

Perfect! Thank you.

This simplifies the process for me enormously and I hope it helps others with the same use case.

Cheers.

Geoff.