Filekit Files

Filekit (release 0.21)
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1. Introduction

Filekit is a set of file processing GUI tools that can be all put into an USB flash, so that no installation is required. Aim of the project is to include many file processing tools such as file searching tool, batch rename file, find duplicate files, split and join files and so on ...

Release 0.1.0 consist of the multi-threaded file search tool that allow you to select multiple folders and files, then search those files that contains particular strings using regular expression.

Release 0.2.0 include the DOS command execution function, so that you can apply DOS command to a list of selected folders and files. As it supports the variable substitution of the filename, extension etc. (please read the corresponding release note under the DOC folder), it makes this a very powerful tools.

This release further enhanced to add an option to select files from the result panel and process again, so that e.g. you can first use the file search function to find the files that match certain criteria, then after that you can select those files and apply certain DOS command (say rename or remove etc.)

Other features will be provided in future.  

2. How to build Filekit

As Filekit is written in Perl for Windows (using Strawberry Perl), it is not necessary to build it. A trimmed down version of the perl package (v5.8.9) which is just enough to support Filekit is already included in the distribution. If you want to have the full perl version, just download it at www.strawberryperl.com.

3. Installation and run

Extract the package by using any decompress utility such as Winzip to any directory you want. To run the different tools, just open the Windows Explorer, browse to the folder you just extra the packag, then double click on the batch file. Or you can open a MS-DOS command prompt, and change to the directory that you just extract the files. Enter the command directly under the command prompt.

As of this release, the following program is available. The example assume that the installation directory is C:\filekit.

3.1 File search and command execution tool:

To run this tool:

C:\filekit> filekit


4. Current known restrictions

- Currently, you cannot select the top drive letter. A workaround is to select all files and folder of the top level of the drive.

- As the program is written in Perl. The saarch string and the file filter are using Perl style (RE) regular expression. E.g. to search all files with extension ".exe", you need to enter the "\.exe$". As the dot has a special meaning in Perl's RE, the $ sign represent end of the file name. To learn more about Perl's RE, a quick guide is available on https://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/perl/regexp.html. Complete reference at http://perldoc.perl.org/perlre.html. 

- When the stop button is pressed, it will only stop the processing of those files not yet started. Files that already started processing will still continue until completed or timeout (in DOS command execution). Although, apparently the button status will immediately change back to "Start", so that you can start a new processing. If you press the "Start" and there are still outstanding operations, it will require to wait for those previously started operations to complete. Thus you will experience some delay of the key status change, which is normal.

- In Windows 8, it was tested that sometimes the system cannot correctly start the cmd.exe, thus will also cause the program waits indefinitely for the DOS command execution. You may able to find it out by the task manager or process explorer. In such case, you may need to kill the "perl" process.

- For performance consideration, the maximum number of selected entries are restricted to be 100.


5. Online resources

  http://sourceforge.net/projects/filekit




Author : Kepler Lam  (Created on: Dec 29, 2014. Last update: Jan 17, 2015)    Email: keplerlam@yahoo.com