September Plugins

[Charles Dye]

Only one updated plugin worth mentioning:

TextUtils plugin v0.59.0

Numerous changes to file selection. Many commands support @file lists and internet files; now you can do stuff like:

dehtml http://jpsoft.com/

or:

echo %@textencoding[http://jpsoft.com/]

 

[Steve Fabian]

Charles:
1/ In the plugins which provide help only via a MSGBOX pop-up it should include the plugin name and version (e.g., SIFT).
2/ SIFT improvements:
2.1/ once again today I needed just the name of a file which was the "last wildcard match", i.e., alphanumerically last in a directory. The command I used was %@execstr[*dir/b/o-n wildcardspec] - it returned just the value I wanted. Could SIFT be enhanced to report based on names, too?
2.2/ often one needs only a single piece of information of just the one largest/latest/earliest ... etc. file. Using the array in such cases is not only an overkill, it must be allocated and deallocated. An @SIFT[] function, accepting the same basic parameters as the SIFT command (but neither array name nor item count), and an additional one specifying the file information to be returned, possibly in a manner similar to the PDIR command's report format specification, would be really nice.

 

[Charles Dye]

1/ In the plugins which provide help only via a MSGBOX pop-up it should include the plugin name and version (e.g., SIFT).

They do all give the plugin name, don't they? Did I miss one?

(Why would the version number be useful? Since the message box is built into the .DLL, there's no way to get help for the wrong version.)

2/ SIFT improvements:

2.1/ once again today I needed just the name of a file which was the "last wildcard match", i.e., alphanumerically last in a directory. The command I used was %@execstr[*dir/b/o-n wildcardspec] - it returned just the value I wanted. Could SIFT be enhanced to report based on names, too?

Sorting asciibetically is trivial. But DIR /ON isn't just a simple asciibetical sort; it also looks for integer fields within filenames and sorts based on value (10 is greater than 9, etc.) Much more complicated, and I don't see any reason to replicate it when we always have DIR available.

2.2/ often one needs only a single piece of information of just the one largest/latest/earliest ... etc. file. Using the array in such cases is not only an overkill, it must be allocated and deallocated. An @SIFT[] function, accepting the same basic parameters as the SIFT command (but neither array name nor item count), and an additional one specifying the file information to be returned, possibly in a manner similar to the PDIR command's report format specification, would be really nice.

Easy enough; but doesn't Vince already have something similar in 4UTILS?

 

[Steve Fabian]

Sorry, otherwise engaged, will respond in substance in a couple of days.

 

[Steve Fabian]

Vince's functions @oldest/@newest provide a filename from a SINGLE directory. @SIFT works on the whole directory hierarchy. My most common use is locating the latest file in a tree obtained by copying from an ftp site, and making a new copy of only those files which are newer than previously downloaded. /[uf] does not work, because each download is into a new directory tree, to provide history, and to use an earlier version when the latest does not perform to my liking (it may do exactly what the author intended). What would be ideal is if COPY (and MOVE) incorporated this capability directly ...

 

[Charles Dye]

Okay; I've put up a new build with a simple @SIFT function.