Re: mc 4.7.0-pre1 marking directories with -/+/*

[Paul Hartman <paul hartman+gentoo gmail com>]

On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Theodore
Kilgore<kilgota banach math auburn edu> wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Aug 2009, Paul Hartman wrote:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I have used mc for years and can't live without it. :)
> >
> > I recently updated to mc 4.7.0-pre1 so I can see what's new and the
> > first thing I noticed was now directories are marked as part of -/+/*
> > operations by default. For - and + there is a "Files Only" checkbox,
> > but I can find no such thing for *. I have three questions:
> >
> > 1) Can I make "Files Only" checkbox remember its setting?
> > 2) Is there a setting to toggle whether * marks dirs?
> > 3) Or maybe a global "Files Only" to make -/+/* behave like previous MC?
> >
> > I also realize it's a -pre1 so maybe the options related to this new
> > functionality simply don't exist (yet) or are not in the UI.
> >
> > I often use the Compare Directories function to compare files in two
> > directories, which marks the differences. In my case I actually want
> > to find the duplicates, so I would press * in one panel to invert the
> > selection and press F8 to delete the duplicate files... now it selects
> > the duplicates along with every subdirectory (since they were not
> > marked as part of the compare operation). It's not a big deal but if
> > there are many subdirectories it can take a while to un-mark them
> > (since there is no "Directories only" option in -/+ that I can find).
> >
> > If you need more info, or if I should create a ticket instead, please
> > let me know.
> >
> > Thanks for the great work!
>
> I have not yet tried any pre- version, but I have been running a recent SVN
> tree version for a while, now. The switch from marking files with
> Cntrl-Alt-Plus to marking files _and_ directories is something which seems
> to have come in recently. I have also found this change to be annoying,
> irritating, inconvenient, and, under some circumstances, positively
> dangerous (think of someone who wants to delete files and not recursively to
> delete subdirectories, for example, or who wants to move all files but not
> recursively to move all subdirectories from an FTP site and discovers that
> one has initiated a very different course of action and it is too late to
> stop it!).
>
> I think it is natural that one might naturally want to mark files for some
> purpose, and not sudirectories. Why change a thing like that?

There are certainly times when I would want it to mark subdirectories,
and it is indeed something I have desired MC to have -- I'd just like
to be able to decide when it will include dirs and when it won't. I
like having options. :)