RayfrdFileTools Files

This app is written in VB6. 

The goal was to provide an open source handy all in one file manipulation tool for whatever features are not fully provided or handled through the windows explorer interface. So far we have three functions which are faster and better performed within this program than elsewhere and those features are:

FILE RENAMER (Mass renames, replace this with that feature, preview, touch all make upper case)

FILE COMBINER (combines split files or for binary combines like with VOB files)

FILE FOLDERER (take each file dragged and dropped and create a folder by that name move the file inside the folder - helpful for thumbgen applications)

Source code and compiled EXE are both included in this main rar compressed file. You can get the unrar from NINITE.COM if you dont have unrar to uncompress and extract the source code.  You could always grab the main EXE file and simply use that.  I recommend you try running it on a folder of test files to see what it can do and run it through its paces to get a feel for how it works.

Some things it is helpful with is the renamer can allow you to select a folder full of files and use change (dot) . to . (dot) as a trick for selecting and touching all files in that folder. It will rename all of them to the same name but in all upper case. 

This is a workaround for the AIOS media tank for not sorting windows mixed case files properly. 

It is also helpful or quicker than pressing F2 on each file and editing them in windows explorer. 

It allows you to select a file and auto-populates the FROM and TO with that files name so you can simply go directly to editing the replace WITH syntax to do a single rename or if you have something in many files like say PPV or DVR in 100 files you can simply click on one to get the DVR text on the change FROM line and delete the stuff on the change TO line entirely then preview and if you like the new look of those files hit MAKE CHANGES and it renames them all. 

The default is all upper case for renamed files and this is to make them sort properly when viewed remotely from non-windows (unix) devices like PIVOS AIOS or other unix based media tank.

It is also handy for bulk renaming things that all have some weird unwanted characters (chars) in common like brackets [ ] or parenths ( ) whatever and you simply want that those chars to go away in all filenames - just type change THIS to THIS and press Preview changes and it will show you the new names which is how they will look after you click rename files.  In this example it is perfectly OK to have nothing in the TO filename box.

The combine files tool is handy for combining files which were split into smaller pieces or just combining VOBs into a single MPG file as another example. Just drag the VOBS (they auto sort into alphabetical order which should be correct in most cases) or whatever needs to be combined into the window and click create and It makes a CMD batch file with the copy command needed to combine the files.

The third tool was created also specifically for thumbgen and trying to place a bunch of files within folders. Drag the files to be foldered into the window and click MakeFolders and voila they (many folders) get created and the files moved into it.

This code is far from perfect.  Since I found myself using it frequently it seemed like it was worth a share and my only hopes are that someone else finds it useful or submits bugs or fixes to help make it even better.

Of course the source code is included. I did not trap all possible errors.  I'm not currently motivated to make it perfect or re-code it into VB.NET because it already does what I need but if anyone else has an interest and wants to do that, I will continue to offer my help and be happy to see it improved.

The renamer needs some work still. It is not perfect - if it ever fails your file may likely wind up named something random in the same folder that starts with "rayford" check the source code. This is because each rename does two renames like this example.

	NAME currentfilename.avi rayfordtempfilename32132
	NAME rayfordtempfilename32132 newrenamedfilename.avi

This is because if you simply want to make all your files upper case and try to rename a file to itself it would crash the app without this method - this also allows for collision with files that exist and can also retry by adding copy1 copy2 similar to how Microsoft Explorer does with destination file collisions in copy mode.