EFU vs CSV

General discussion related to "Everything".
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jimspoon
Posts: 187
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 11:39 pm

EFU vs CSV

Post by jimspoon »

I'm exploring how i might use Everything to catalog files on offline as well as online volumes. It seems I could save more columns of file info using CSV rather than EFU, but two problems (1) if I open the CSV in Everything, I can't open a listed file by double-clicking on it; (2) I can't index a CSV without first saving it as an EFU, thus losing the extra columns.

I see that EFU files store the following:
Filename,Size,Date Modified,Date Created,Attributes

However I can export all the columns displayed by Everything to a CSV file. And then I can open that CSV file in Everything using File > Open File List, and see all the columns I previously exported. I'm guessing I could consolidate multiple CSV file lists to a single CSV file list, and then view all the columns for the all consolidated CSV files in this way.

I just exported the same list of files twice, first as an EFU, then as a CSV. I opened the EFU file list in Everything, and double-clicked one of the files in Everything, and it opened up. But I just discovered that if I open up the CSV file list in Everything, and then double-click on a file in the list to open it, it won't open - a "file not found" message appears.

Maybe that's because the column headers in the CSV file are not the same as the EFU headers? The headers in my CSV were as follows:
"Name","Path","Size","Custom Property Test","Full Path Length","Date Modified","Extension","Hard Link Count","Hard Link Filenames","Alternate Data Stream Names","Alternate Data Stream Text/Plain"

Maybe it would work if (1) I add the "Full Path" column to the Results List as the first column (2) export to CSV (3) edit the CSV header row, replacing "Full Path" with "Filename". No, that didn't work. When I tried to open the edited CSV, I got an empty results list. Maybe there's a mismatch between the columns of the Results List and the CSV columns.

Also I see that I can include an EFU file list in the Everything index, I can't index a CSV file with its extra columns. I can import the CSV into the File List Editor, and then save it as an EFU, and then index the EFU. But then I lose the info in the extra columns I saved in the CSV file.
void
Developer
Posts: 16753
Joined: Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:31 pm

Re: EFU vs CSV

Post by void »

EFU files are CSV files.

EFU files expect the following column:

Filename



The following properties are always exported, no matter what columns are visible in Everything:

Filename, Size, Date Modified, Date Created and Attributes.

Any other visible columns are also exported.

Support for more properties is on my TODO list.



EFU files currently do support all Everything properties.
The File List Editor does not support all properties yet.



Exporting only saves gathered information.
If you have ungathered information, please select all files and from the File menu, click Read Extended Information.



Everything treats CSV as a simple filelist
Only the filename column (or the first column for filenames) is used.



File Lists
jimspoon
Posts: 187
Joined: Tue Apr 26, 2011 11:39 pm

Re: EFU vs CSV

Post by jimspoon »

Thank you Void, now I see that Everything does export the visible columns to an EFU file. Sorry I missed that. That takes care of everything! I'm looking forward to exporting my offline volumes to EFUs.
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