Ignoring file extensions

I received the email notifying me of the 2.4 release today.

You can imagine my excitement! I’ve been waiting for the “ignore file extensions” feature ever since it disappeared in V2.0

My problem is that I have hundreds of thousands of image files and need each in bmp, gif, and jpg format. What I need is the facility to check that all the filenames in a particular bmp folder match all the file names in the corresponding jpg folder and so on.

I thought that if I told beyond compare to ignore file extensions, timestamps, and contents, I would be left with a list of compared filenames? But this does not appear to work as I had expected

[Craig]

Hi Derek,

If you tell BC to ignore file extensions (and do a full refresh), it will line up the files regardless of their extension, in a method similar to what BC 1 did. If one directory only has jpgs and one only has bmps then it should line them up. What is BC doing incorrectly in your case?

[spencoid]

I too was thrilled about the prospect of ignoring file extensions but can not find out how to do so. I checked and I do have 2.4 installed and looked in help and all the options setting and rechecked each icon but just do not see where to specify the ignoring of extensions.

[Chris]

To ignore file extensions in BC 2.4, select Session|Comparison Control. Go to the Advanced tab. Check "Ignore file extensions". Click OK to return to the main window.

Select View|Full Refresh (Ctrl+F5) to recompare the files. A file named foo.jpg on the left should now line up with foo.bmp on the right.

Having the ability to ignore file extensions is the coolest thing in the world, seriously. I have quite a few needs for this, can be sure I'm going to UP to 2.4.

Hi Derek,

If you tell BC to ignore file extensions (and do a full refresh), it will line up the files regardless of their extension, in a method similar to what BC 1 did. If one directory only has jpgs and one only has bmps then it should line them up. What is BC doing incorrectly in your case?



Craig,

Okay I can get it to work with a bit of trickery.

If I open Beyond Compare and browse to the two folders I wish to compare I see the two file lists "interleaved"
(ie alternating gaps down both lists because the file names dont match).

If I now go into Comparison Control and uncheck "Compare Timestamps", "Compare Contents", and check "Ignore file Extensions"; nothing changes.

If I click refresh (as you suggested) still nothing changes.

If I add and remove a space to a folder path so that I can click the "Go" button, again nothing changes.

BUT, if I navigate up a level and then drop back down I get the correctly aligned lists I need !!

Okay,

Having read your original reply a few more times, the meaning has finally sunk in!

The key to this is doing a full refresh - I had no idea that there was such thing (what a newb). I have now found out how to customise the toolbar to remove the refresh icon and replace it with full refresh, so I now I'm happy!

thanks for your help
Derek

[spencoid]

I thought BC was great before the ability to ignore extensions. I was able to accomplish the needed tasks with the use of a file renamer but that was an extra step or two. Now it can be done almost all in BC almost. I have an unusual situation in which case it would be very helpful to have one more option or possibly just a suggestion as to how to do it with the existing features. In many cases, I have found that BC has all that I need if I can be clever enough. My problem is that I need to compare files with different extensions and also different suffixes. I can always use a rename program to remove and reinsert the suffix but this is a little risky since I am good at forgetting now and then. Being able to do a compare without modifying the files would be easier and safer. An example of my files to compare would be 11111.cis 11111e.mid 11111em.mid etc. To be able to specify a part of the file name to ignore (extension, prefix etc) would be great. I have written perl scripts to do the comparisons but would prefer to just use BC as I am not that great at regex.

[Chris]

Spencer,

Thanks for the suggestion. Matching up filenames the way you describe is on our wish list for a future version of Beyond Compare.

The Ignore Extensions option is something I have needed for quite a while. I am using it to match files on the pc against files on an IBM mainframe via FTP. The pc files have extensions, the mainframe files do not. For example C:\MyRexxs\ compared to ftp://myuserid@ibmmainframe.bigcompany.com/'USERID.A.REXX' might have files SAMPLE1.REX & SAMPLE2.REX on the pc and SAMPLE1 & SAMPLE2 on the mainframe.

The new option matches them up correctly. Yeah!

One minor problem is that the mainframe does not report sizes for the files, so file size matching always compares different. If I select rules based comparison it retrieves the files from the mainframe and finds the matches.

The mainframe timestamps are by date only, so the timestamps via ftp all have 12:00:00 am in the time. I tried to set the second tolerance to 86400 (a full 24 hours) but it is limited to 32767. It would be very nice to be able to compare timestamps by date only as well as date/time.

The real gotcha I run in to though is when I try to synchronize from the mainframe to the pc. The files are correctly matched and found unequal, but when the file copies to the pc it does not get named with the extension it was matched to. Instead it adds another file on the pc side with no extension. I then have to manually delete the old file and rename the new one to add the extension. This becomes quite a hassle when the number of files goes over a few dozen.

I guess I would like to see it either replace the file is was matched against or add an option to specify a default extension to "assume" when one is not present on the sending file. Ideally this default could be set different for each folder on the ftp site or else available in a combo box on the toolbar for quick access.

Thanks for a truly great product!

[Chris]

Hi Bill,

I'm glad to hear that you're finding the "Ignore File Extensions" option useful.

I'll add both of your suggestions to our wish list.