Dirwalker - Simplistic and Ergonomic Directory Browser

[Sanmayce]

First, glad that today I found the new forum, hi to all fellow members.

These days I am playing with my new GUI tool - Dirwalker - The QB64 Simplistic-n-Ergonomic Directory Browser.

Screenshot #1, showing the initial window with all the quick help:

   

Screenshot #2, showing the search panel filtering only the specified files/lines:

   

Screenshot #3, showing the four columns (fileTYPE, fileSIZE, fileMODIFIEDtime, fileNAME), sortable respectively with F1/F2/F3/F4:

   

The main idea is to have one cross-platform tool allowing bypassing of ls/dir commands, most of the time, anyway.

Currently, I have written revision 5++++, which has some original ideas/functionalities, wanna develop it steadily in next months.



Two main goals/features are EASYNESS of navigation and VISIBILITY-n-CRISPNESS, targeting the 4K monitors (3K as well) while allowing 1600x900 modes too.

In next posts hope to share more...

As always, the full source code and the Linux/Windows binaries are in the attached package.


  Dirwalker_r5++++_Sourcecode_Binaries.zip (Size: 2.6 MB / Downloads: 66)

[mnrvovrfc]

Welcome to the forums. Nice font in the screenshots!

[bplus]

Hey @Sanmayce you found us, Welcome back!

[Pete]

From .net to .org and now on .com. Glad you made your way back. I did a lot of this stuff in SCREEN 0 back in the 1990's.

Pete

[Sanmayce]

Hi mnrvovrfc, bplus, Pete.
Don't know why it took me so long to find the new forum, perhaps, I was kinda hopeless seeing a promising project going to limbo.

Anyway, QB is a living legend, cannot die, the beautiful/fast code is about to be written/shown.

I wanna see your suggestions/opinions on what you wanna see in one extra-well-written Directory Browser.
What functionality is a-must, what is desirable, and what drives you crazy.

The main goal, the QB community to have one nifty tool for directory contents browsing, as a start.

By the way, last night I replaced transparently the 'Exact' search with the fastest wildcard search function, by chance, written by me in C, hee-hee. To be shared tomorrow night...

Regarding globbing/wildcards, a funfact, there was one American coder who wrote in 2005 an article and C function, with 1.1M views, however in 2013 I dethroned him as being fastest, the unappreciative guys turn a blind eye, typical soullessness.

Code: (Select All)

And from Intel's 'wildbench.cod' included in the benchmark, you can see:
_WildcardMatch_Iterative_JackHandy: 000ce-00000+2= 208 bytes long
_WildcardMatch_Iterative_Kaze: 000a3-00000+13= 176 bytes long

This very function will reinforce QB64, outperforming all smartasses.

[bplus]

I checked it out, 4289 LOC huge and complex. I got it working fast enough with .\ fixes added to files that didn't have them.
The screen is too large for my laptop but was cool watching the box grow out down and right when starting. Honestly had no idea how to use it, I clicked something and it was gone. (I am more a mouser than Key-combo guy.) You tube demo fabulous! Looks truly speedy! Probably uses your sorting work you showed us in the other forum.

Does this have multiple select to copy and paste pathed files and/or folders to _Clipboard?

I wouldn't mind a file search that works better than Windows (though I haven't tried it with new SS drive. Guess I learned to get along without Windows Search long ago.)

[Sanmayce]

> I checked it out, 4289 LOC huge and complex. I got it working fast enough with .\ fixes added to files that didn't have them.

Thank you for the feedback, you mean the lacking ".\" in "memKAZE" header?!

Code: (Select All)

Declare CustomType Library ".\dirfile"
...
Declare CustomType Library "memKAZE"
...
Declare CustomType Library ".\treedump"
...

> The screen is too large for my laptop but was cool watching the box grow out down and right when starting. Honestly had no idea how to use it, I clicked something and it was gone.

Sorry for that, really wanted to support that sturdy old laptops with 1366x768, however wanted all the key/mouse combos to be shown at start (hard to fit them in less than 1600x900).
As for unexpected exit, no guess what caused it, maybe during the allocation of the 8GB failed, yes I experimentally target million of files with their full path.
In incoming r.6 will try to make things more friendly.

> (I am more a mouser than Key-combo guy.)

Same here, the three button mouse is a-must for fast navigations, yet keyboard+pad always has to be covered.
For many years I used crappy mice, but no more, for few years now I use 'White Shark' (kinda knock-off or licensed) - nearly identical to the 'Dragonwar', these are the TANKS of mice, so sturdy, so heavy, so ergonomic, love them.

Highly recommend both brands, however being 8+ years old they are hard to find:

   

https://youtu.be/E2790wt7pfk?t=486

> Looks truly speedy! Probably uses your sorting work you showed us in the other forum.

Not really, haven't optimized it, there is redundancy for the sake of visual feedback, for example rereading the whole current folder recursively is unnecessary, yet wanted to give the total number first, in case of having 3+ million files.
Sorting is written in plain QB64, not the optimized C variant from my MANATARKA header, all the C functions (sort, search, hash, vectorized lowercasing) are to be added in next revisions.
My Quicksort quest ended in the summer, beaten (in single thread, algorithmically) by the awesome Dutch coder Igor van den Hoven a.k.a. Scandum, yet, I managed to write the fastest console tool for sorting lines of a given file. It is a Linux/Windows console tool beating GNUsort (on at least for up to 8 threads CPUs).
Since Windows' sort tool is awful (kinda left in DOS times, unable to sort lines longer than 65535 chars!) I did a showdown with the only cross-platform sort analog of GNUsort - RUST coreutils, my tool being 2x faster on sorting the whole Linux kernel 6:
https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/4049
As always it is 100% FREE and open-source:

   

Here it is, sourcecode and Linux/Windows binaries:

  Schmekerezada_Sourcecode_Linux-Windows_Binaries_2022-Oct-29.7z (Size: 1.35 MB / Downloads: 67)

> Does this have multiple select to copy and paste pathed files and/or folders to _Clipboard?

No, the initial idea was (and still is) Dirwalker to be a pure browser (not manager), kinda viewer not touching files. My wish is to refine the interface (many problems with sticky keys in Fedora, I encounter, it is frustrating key-release logic working on Windows to behave differently/buggily on Linux) first.

> I wouldn't mind a file search that works better than Windows (though I haven't tried it with new SS drive. Guess I learned to get along without Windows Search long ago.)

Oh, here I have big plans, to offer functionality in its own class, unseen.

[bplus]

Hi @Sanmayce

Yes, just ./ added to 3 files including ico fixed things for my system, if I recall correctly.

Those Mice look like robots or jet-skis! Cool

Is that image a computer enhanced photo or 100% generated? beautiful + cute

Should a coding magician reveal all his secrets?

[mnrvovrfc]

In another forum I had belonged to long ago, there was an off-topic thread for "who I really am". One guy stole the whole attention posting a picture of "his wife", tried to say it was true by discussing how her family and friends thought of him but didn't like being photographed with her. I half-believed him. It was a pathetic way to get attention in an impersonal posting forum overwhelmingly dominated by men. Almost forgot to mention "his wife" was an outrageously beautiful Japanese model. I wonder if she ever got a contract.

I hope that lady (photograph posted in this topic) is either a famous actress or a friend who knows her face is posted somewhere online.

Sorry for going off-topic...

[Sanmayce]

Hi @bplus

> Yes, just ./ added to 3 files including ico fixed things for my system, if I recall correctly.

I appreciate all feedback, I am using QB64 v2.02, didn't know that had to be more strict with paths.

> Those Mice look like robots or jet-skis! Cool

Oh believe me, they are fullmetal jacket, heavy metal all the way, the coating is anti-slippery and feels as it should. Before that, I had the stupidity to buy one 110$ MadCATz 6 or whatever, was disappointed bigtime, it was so small and light (despite the ability to enlarge it and the weights added to the package) - immediately gave it away. It is for bighanded guys.

> Is that image a computer enhanced photo or 100% generated? beautiful + cute

Love it, it is princess Aeolian, created by WLOP, https://www.artstation.com/wlop
Since Princess Sheherezada/Scheherazade has the personality of a She-Schmeker, it was an obvious collage of the two superwords, resulting in the Princess of Sorting. Etymology is twofold, but mostly from Yiddish שמעקער‎ (shmeker) (sly, crafty, cool, awesome) and German Schmecker (“taster/appreciator of fine things”).

@mnrvovrfc
To me, as long as I remember, always tools had to have logo/emblem/mascot associated with it, thus my sort tool resembles the Noble Gal, (she was a Vizier's daughter of the second man after the Sultan, hee-hee Sultan being Scandum in a way), the Crafty Manipulator.

As for going off-topic, when a thread is dedicated to an original browser, all kind of satelite tools are NOT OFF-TOPIC, as sorters, searchers, convertors. When was the last time someone gave you freely the sourcecode of anything remotely called FASTEST?!

> Should a coding magician reveal all his secrets?

Amateur coder for life, [still] no magic, just passionately looking back, where most people passed by. In a single word - DREAMWARDS, there is a song on YouTube with that name, salute, everyone who feels what I am talking about, with it.
In few hours will share the work of one real magician in C coding, he dethroned me (was unaware of that until last night) in wildcard searching back in 2014...

Not having the GLOBBING counterpart of INSTR() is not serious, no serious tool can be presented without superfast wildcard matching - it is to be used not only in filtering fast millions of filepaths but used as a search function for finding lines in files.