Bug (not really): clear history (MRU)

[cstern]

This is not really a bug, unless you consider an undesired effect of a setting a bug )

I just remembered that I noticed a privacy problem - and it is also present in BC for win as far as I remember:

If you set the privacy settings to not save sessions automatically (number of sessions auto saved=0) you probably also want to have the last used item (MRU) to 0. But this is not possible - you can oly select 1 as the smallest value.
(Seetings found at "Preferences->Advanced->Metrics" (perhaps the two first settings in that section should be called "Privacy"(?) )

The result is that the last used path is saved in the drop down box ("Enter path here") on both sides of the FC window.

I think you should consider to also let the user select "0" as MRU to avoid this. It could be that the path points to a hidden folder with confidential information (particularly since BC does not hide directories with a dot as first character (which I think is fine)).

(Just thinking about this last sentence, in the "privacy" or "metrics" settings you could perhaps also put an option to show or hide .dot files and .dot directories)

[Aaron]

Hello,

We do not currently support completely disabling the MRU list, but it is on our wishlist to enhance this behavior.

You could use File Name filters to exlcude *.dot and .dot directories, which would remove them from the comparison. This is similar to how we exclude Protected Operating System files by default (Other Filters, DOS Attributes). If you Suppress Filters, the items would still show up.

[cstern]

Oh, I may not have made myself clear. By .dot I actually mean directories and files that starts with a dot, e.g. ".hidden-directory". By default such files and folders are hidden in Finder.

Like files and folders with the "h" attribute in DOS

[Aaron]

Hello,

You could use a File Name filter, like:
-.*/

[cstern]

Yes, I am completely aware of this possibility and I use it when needed (e.g. when making a backup to an external drive where I don't want ".DS*" files etc to be copied).

What I am talking about is to mimic the default behavior of the OS (in Finder).

To perhaps make myself more clear, compare to BC3 for Windows. If you have C:\ on one of the sides you will not, by default, see system and hidden files, like the "System Volume Information" folder and the "pagefile.sys" file (which have H and S DOS attributes set).

Don't misundertand me - I personally actually prefer that the mac hidden files and folder are visible (i.e. items starting with a dot as the first character in their names).

What I suggest is that these files per default are hidden as well in BC, but with the option to show them in the preferences. This will be the behavior seen in Finder (unless you run the system command "defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES" and restart Finder)

[Zoë]

I think there's a bit of a distinction here. By default, on Windows, Beyond Compare does show files and folders that only have the "hidden" attribute set, it just excludes ones that have both hidden and system set, which Microsoft refers to as "super hidden". That behavior was introduced during the 3.x cycle, almost entirely in response to the junction points Microsoft added in Vista ("Documents and Settings" -> "Users", etc). I think that the symlink handling we added later was a better way to handle that, and if we'd figured that out first I don't know that we would have added the super hidden behavior afterwards.

I would consider .* to be closer to hidden than super hidden. Since BC targets both programmers and IT people, I don't think that hiding them by default is a slam dunk, and I'm reluctant to have it follow Finder's AppleShowAllFiles option since it would mean the same session could show different things. I do see four other comments in our bug tracker about at least providing an easy toggle for it though, and I'll add your comments there for consideration.