File List and File Menu

The file list on the right side of the application shows the results of your search. It also allows for various views on the different files. Right click any one file to get the context menu. The context menu and the "File" section of the application menu essentially offer the same operations, but with a subtle difference concerning the respective selection model:
Operations called from the context menu act on the set of highlighted files (the entries selected by clicking with the mouse). The application menu on the other hand processes the checked files, i.e. the entries selected by virtue of the checkboxes in the first column.

Context menu and application menu both display the following view options which are made available if only a single file is selected:

Each of those views will allow you to specify the encoding (character set) that should be used to read and write the file. Unless you change it, the platform default encoding will be used. If the actual encoding of a file is incompatible with the default encoding, this may result in "funny characters" or error messages. Note that you can add character sets to the list through the application configuration.

The "View" option is only available if the "Find" tab or the "Replace" tab is selected. It will highlight the matches of the regular expression on the respective tab. The "Preview" option is only available if the "Replace" tab is selected.

If you are running on Java 6 or later, the context menu will display two options to call external programs:

Linux user should read the note at the bottom of this page.

The context menu furthermore offers a "Rename" operation if not more than one file is selected. As you will have guessed, it allows you to change the name of the selected file.

In the context menu, as well as in the "File" menu, you will find also the following operational options:

Don't forget that the selection model of context menu and "File" menu is different! If you choose an operational option from the context menu, it will operate on the set of hightlighted files that you have selected with the mouse. If you choose an operational option from the "File" menu, it will use the set of checked files that you may have selected by clicking the checkboxes of the file list.

The tree copy operation may need some more explanation. If the base directory for the find command was c:\base\dir, and you tree copy a file c:\base\dir\subdir\a.file to some other directory c:\elsewhere, it will actually be copied to c:\elsewhere\subdir\a.file. That is, tree copy also copies the files relative directory tree.

The "File" menu allows also to export the result file list to a file, or to import a list of files for further processing. When exporting a file list, the full path of each file is written on a new line. This is also the expected format of the input file. However, if a path can not be found, the generated list entry will automatically be unselected.

At the very bottom of the result file list you will find the number of selected files. By default all files are selected. You will also see an indication at the bottom should there be any errors during a replace or rename operation.


Linux User Note: Linux user should be aware that the Java calls to the system desktop have implementation flaws in (at least some versions of) JDK 6 for Linux. They might not work properly for some desktop configurations and make FAR display obscure error messages such as "Failed to show URI". However, those are JDK bugs beyond my reach and responsibility and a good reason to update to Java 7. This concerns only the Open File and Open Directory option from the context menu.