blog: xplorer2 v6.3 (final) released

[Kilmatead]

its up there with the windows search indexer (worse)

A bloody confederacy of dunces, you are, all by yourself. Exactly where do you think this stuff is stored so it is "instantly" available? It's stored in memory. All of it. Constantly. Modification dates, folder sizes, attributes, textual contents, pathnames, etc, etc, etc, up to, and including, the proverbial kitchen sink.

The full indexed database is saved/stored to disc only on system shutdown, or the exiting of the ES process - it is NEVER scanned for data upon request via the disc, not only would that be inefficient, that would be slow - hence it is kept in memory just waiting for you to pull your finger out and do something with it. Just remember to wash your hands first.

So yes, it takes up memory - does anyone care about that now? I don't think so. It's not uncommon for ES power users to have indexes in the GB range. If THEY aren't surprised by this, then why are you? The browser wars have moved on to other things to squabble about, and memory is plentiful in any PC built since the last Apollo mission, so it's a non-issue. First world problems! Besides, Edge-Browser is for loooooozers, loooooozers!

No one uses ES because they are under the delusion that it's "light-weight" - they use it because it's fast. Yes, in this modern day of SSD's discs are fast too, but they are by no means as fast as memory, never mind not being quite as ubiquitous as some might believe.

It's also "worse" than WDS itself because, as stated, the index stores everything it's told to, the user can choose what to keep, what not to, and what to do with it - WDS doesn't offer much for power-users in options - you get what it gives you and bugger any transparency of control.

Also, as ES itself can use WDS directly ("si:"), users don't actually need to index things twice (like file-content), they can leave it to one or the other - or, like any power user worth his salt in RAM, they can use both and more. The important thing is they can CHOOSE.

The trade off is speed. You either want it, or you don't. You don't get to complain about it.

What do you use all your precious RAM for anyway? Anything? Or is it just sitting there waiting for you to start your belatedly autumnal late-life career as a spunky young youtube video editor? The world has enough of them.

It's good to rant from time to time - loosens the tight grip of subtle melancholia and doubt so constricting the modern soul.

I have news for you

Crocodile tears, mate, crocodile tears.

[nikos]

excuses, excuses
so had you opted to index file contents as well, you would have starved the world off RAM chips for "instant search"
an oxymoron up there with UK's definition of "defence"

[Kilmatead]

As you supposedly "fixed" MFT by breaking it for Admin users, you have effectively condemned me to indexing contents, so yes, I will happily sacrifice the RAM for instant search. Like any intelligent person, I purposely over-provisioned for it when building the machine, so that's what it's there for. Live cheap, die cheap.

As America in this wasted century reminds the world why the same problem solving for Germany in 1938 didn't exactly go as planned (and never works anyway), how can you expect the three blind mice of Europe to have any grasp of history or foreknowledge of their own dissolution or, in fact, do anything other than live in the fear their mothers bathed them in as children?

History shows that all late-stage empires lash out in violence as they inevitably decline into authoritarian irrelevance, as you should well know as "the tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed upon itself" (attributed to Thucydides) came to pass with the regime of the Thirty Tyrants which so inspired your childhood ambitions. Go on, admit it - you always wanted to be number 31, since you knew in your heart only you could provide the solutions the others merely dreamt of.

You can't be interested in philosophy and history only when it offers nebulous solutions to your own personal abstract questions of life, you have to take it seriously even when it threatens the very things you were mistakenly taught it was meant to preserve.

In much wisdom is much grief, for he that increaseth his knowledge also increaseth his sorrow

But as this is the internet, and the technocracy itself is fulfilled by distracting the very people it was meant to help, soothing cat videos are only a click away, so worry not about imbibing the spirit of Pericles, worry instead at the scant threads which sustain the illusion of confidence in the modern world, and learn to enjoy watching it unravel in the idle hands of the great unwashed as history, yet again, repeats itself.

Oh wait - we're not allowed to talk politics? A good rule to live by, as the Irish know better than most. Ok, then why haven't you fixed "verbatim search" yet? Inquiring minds (who only wish to live in the dark cave of their own unknowing) want to know! (Now there's an oxymoron!)

[drac]

Kilmatead,

Not Thucydides - whose history broke off before the end of the war and the regime of the Thirty Tyrants in Athens - but journalist Chris Hedges, originally in a graduation speech at Rockford College, Illinois.[9] Repeated in later articles, the wording changes (the original had “the Athenian leadership” imposing tyranny, not Athens), and it comes to be attributed directly to Thucydides.

Also confirmed in Wikiquote.

[Kilmatead]

Yeah, I know - I actually got it from Hedges (I'm a fan) and he repeats it as often as he can in his interviews - that's why I accentuated the "attributed to" - the trouble is, no one has heard of Chris Hedges, so giving him credit (which he abjures anyway, as any good journalist would), doesn't have much impact.

What is interesting is that while he wouldn't take credit for it himself (the graduation speech was just his first draft in public) he himself continues to attribute it to Thucydides despite admitting that the timelines don't sync - as far as he's concerned the scholarship and original spirit of the age speaks for itself and supersedes any modern idea of linear interpretation, and I'm not one to argue with him. I employ that sort of thing all the time in my own reflections, so it's good practice.

It's also his way of having a little dig at later historians who go out of their way to artificially accentuate the importance of the West (and they are legion) in their insistence regarding the "accepted understanding" of events. Liberal education ain't what it used to be.

Very interesting bloke is our Mr. Hedges: born privileged (his own words) -> Harvard divinity student -> read the bible in original Greek (Koine) -> chucked away scholarly upbringing to become a war correspondent - and pretty much became one of only a handful of journalists who aren't destroying their profession by selling a popular narrative (not just in the U.S., they've all just become naive stenographers for press-releases around the world). If it weren't for him and Robert Sheer and maybe a couple of others, I'd dismiss almost anything in media as just plain laughable propaganda (because it is), too bad these lads are ageing fast. I hate this century and everything in it - and yes, I accept the contradictions that statement gives birth to.

Ultimately, it's been more than a few years since I last read Thucydides, so I'm only too happy to defer to a man much brighter than myself in his regards for history. That said, I did just finish a reference on the Tyrants - I'm always on the lookout for ammunition to throw back at Nikos

[drac]

Kilmatead,

I have been checking in with this forum pretty much every day for the past 13 years or so. I remember some fun and stimulating conversations we had back "in the day". But after your "disappearance" from the forum I stopped active participation. I "looked" for you from time to time - here and there. Then, with your resurrection, it seemed like you were just an alter ego of Nikos, all along. Though you are so different than the persona that Nikos shares here, I don't know who - or what - you are. And, in the end, it doesn't really matter - because Kilmatead enhances this forum! Maybe you can provide "proof of life" as a way to separate yourself from the rumor of being the anti-Nikos?

Sadly, my intellect and interests are quite different than yours - though there is an occasional intersection of interests. And when those intersections happen (or when I have time) I may explore things you say, of which I have some knowledge - or no knowledge at all - but sound intriguing. I do some research and, if appropriate, respond to your post - as I did above. It might waste your time reading and responding to my posts, but that is your choice.

[lnbrantley]

regression from Everything 1.4 to 1.5a?

Drag and drop from Everything 1.5a to scrap pane is failing when the list is a few thousand lines long.
Works fine in Everything 1.4.

This is not a bug in x2.

Anybody reproduce?
Suggestions?

[nikos]

why don't you search in xplorer2 directly, so you don't need to drag=drop?

[Kilmatead]

Drag and drop from Everything 1.5a to scrap pane is failing when the list is a few thousand lines long.

Anybody reproduce?

Aside from the usual caveats about not being able to drag between elevated and non-elevated processes, the only curious observation I could find was that dragging 2,000 .ini files was instant, 72,000 mp3's took ~8 seconds, but 56,000 exe/dll's took over 3 minutes (!) from 1.5 and over 4 minutes from 1.4 (I suspect the last two were possible AV interference).

So they worked, they just took awhile.

That said, the whole point of this thread is to check x2's slightly "more proper integration" of ES 1.5, so try it that way and see what you get.

One interesting observation (and this has been discussed elsewhere) is that x2 can be a little slow in populating the frame - that is, filling the scrap container with results. For example, using ES to do the same exe/dll search from within x2 still took a little over 3 minutes to complete. There's nothing wrong with the search, it's just that x2 can't run up the hill fast enough to save poor Alm-Uncle after his heart attack, so little wee Heidi is left very sad and bereft of hope.

Curiously, the same mp3 search only took 25 seconds to populate 70,000 files, so I do think there's something off about seeking binaries - and you can take that to be as politically incorrect as you wish, if you choose to colour the world that way.

The moral of the story is that if you get over 5,000 results for any given search, you haven't really found anything anyway, so being more exacting in your initial approach always provides dividends (except with women - they tend to be put-off by that sort of thing).

[lnbrantley]

why don't you search in xplorer2 directly, so you don't need to drag=drop?

Much slower than Everything - maybe the same problem, Everything taking a long time to populate scrap window with a long list?

[lnbrantley]

... I could find was that dragging 2,000 .ini files was instant, 72,000 mp3's took ~8 seconds, but 56,000 exe/dll's took over 3 minutes (!) from 1.5 and over 4 minutes from 1.4 (I suspect the last two were possible AV interference).

Weird that file type makes a difference.

It doesn't seem to be a linear scaling based on number of lines. I did an Everything search that returned about 4000 files. I select the first 2500 files and drag into scrap - instant. If I select 2700 files instead, it takes longer than I'm willing to wait.

A different search yields a completely different breakpoint where it switches from instant to seemingly forever.

The moral of the story is that if you get over 5,000 results for any given search, you haven't really found anything anyway, so being more exacting in your initial approach always provides dividends

No. The over 5000 results are just the initial filtering. Then you dump those into an x2 scrap pane for further fine tuned filtering based on x2's extensive array of column attributes.

[Kilmatead]

The over 5000 results are just the initial filtering. Then you dump those into an x2 scrap pane for further fine tuned filtering based on x2's extensive array of column attributes.

I understand the paradigm - I do it that way myself (ex post facto elimination) rather than investing in actual forethought. Inefficient, but it gets the job done, and ES is really good at encouraging such an approach (speed makes us... lazy).

Files types shouldn't make a difference (and nor should a couple of thousand extra objects selected), so I can only surmise that anti-viruses (which "watch" for copy/paste events and scan the buffer) would be hyper-vigilant about some types more than others (PDF bad, TXT harmless, ZIP bad, DLL really bad, etc.)

I presume you don't have an Ultimate license? That would allow x2 to search at the same speed as Everything (because it would actually use Everything behind the scenes), and dump directly into the scrap, saving you all sorts of steps, dragging, etc.

I take it you didn't try the beta? The betas are unlicensed so you could try/test all features - but the links are gone now, and I deleted the ones I had - ask Nikos, and he might give you a temp to play with, to see if the ES integration suits your needs ("...longer than I'm willing to wait") and is worth it (to you) to pony up the extra license level.

Can't hurt to ask. (If he says no, let me know, me and the other kids will kick sand in his face after school every day for a week.)

[lnbrantley]

I do have Ultimate, but the searches were much slower than using Everything. I say "were" because I've gone back to Everything 1.4.1.1024, and disabled Everything search in x2 advanced options for the time being.

I have Everything-1.5.0.1383a.x64-Setup.exe in my old installers archive. Is that one of the betas? I'll give that a try later.

[Kilmatead]

x2 won't recognise ES 1.4 - that old one uses a completely different API - and is essentially inferior to 1.5 in every way, so only 1.5 will work within x2. That's not just my opinion by the way, the ES forum users are doing their best to convince people to switch, regardless of the "alpha" tag which unfortunately tends to scare people off.

(My plugin which aids in getting foldersizes and columns into x2 from ES is actually compatible with both 1.4 and 1.5, at least for foldersizes, but I'm of half a mind to deprecate 1.4 support entirely.)

In any event, should you wish to stick with 1.4 for whatever reason, the option in x2 to disable ES search will have no effect, positive or negative.

Due to subsequent bug fixes in ES and its SDK (some of which are directly relevant to us) using the most recent version (as of now that's .1406) is important. Your .1383 is actually from June 2024 (!), so it's... very old. Scary old. So old my grandmother would wax both lyrically and laconically about the the escapades of her comparative youth.

So if you do wish to try it again sometime, just update your ES to the latest, and searching with x2 will use it without you needing to do anything else (besides re-enabling search).

On the odd chance you're still suspicious that it is somehow slower, searches can be checked to verify they really are using ES and have the expected syntax by using the "Tools -> Search Status" menu option in the x2 scrap container itself.

[nikos]

an important parameter for speed in x2 is whether the drag-drop is organized (sorted) by folder, if results are "tidy" then insertion is much faster