3 Folder Comparison

[adelphiaUK]

I have just gone through a painstaking task of recovering around 6GB of movies from 2 failed HDDs (both were slow and needed replacing, and this just forced my hand).

As I have had to recover these files over numerous other drives on my system, I need to evaluate whether a folder (which contains a single MKV file), which we will call folder A, is NOT in folder B or folder C (the final/new drive) already.

All the files are MKV files but there are two types; UHD, identified with [UHD], and non UHD.

I'm not sure if I'm over thinking this and I tried using firstly a simple wildcard string *[UHD].mkv and then a regex one of [UHD].mkv but all the folders containing an MKV file, UHD or not, seem to be showing in the list.

I have Show Different Items and Show Left Unique items set, and under 3-Way Compare, I have everything checked except Show Left Only Missing Items.

I know I only need to look for items in Folder A that are neither in Folder B or Folder C, but I just can't get it to list UHD versus non-UHD entries.

Any suggestions to show how dense I'm being, please?

Thanks in advance.

[sdottaka]

Is it correct that the main problem is that the specified wildcards aren't working, or is there another issue such as unexpected folder listings?
Could you please attach a screenshot with the status bar as shown below (because I would like to know what wildcards are specified)? Also, if there is a problem with the displayed file names being made public, please mask some of them.

[adelphiaUK]

Here's the image. Ignore the RECYCLE BIN and System Volume Information, I just forgot to hide them. Also, this is a mockup for speed as there's a lot mor UHD files dotted all over the place (I had system crashes!).

and here's the same list not in tree view and recycle bin omitted

[sdottaka]

Thank you for attaching the image.
I may have misunderstood your question, and I might still be misunderstanding it.
However, if your goal is to exclude folders that do not contain [UHD], please try creating and applying a file filter that does so, as shown below.

name: #2709
desc: Longer description

def: include

d: \\(?!.*\[UHD\]).*$

[adelphiaUK]

You have slightly misunderstood.

What I need to establish is which of the comparison folders (MIDDLE and RIGHT) , if any, contains an MKV file. The comparison folders may have a single MKV file, which will always be the case on the LEFT, but may have lots more files of file types I'm not interested in. I need to compare with the folder in the MIDDLE to ensure the MKV is not present and, if not, check the RIGHT to make sure it's not there either. Basically, it's a "LEFT only" comparison check but also, as I separate my UHD and non UHD across different folders, hence the [UHD] portion, I need to check that, not only is it not in the normal group and/or not in the [UHD] group. The reason for the selection of the [UHD] (or non [UHD]) is to ensure I don't move the file to the wrong destination folder and subsequently have to go hunting again. I wouldn't discover this, BTW, until I did a resync of my movie database.

I hope that clears it up a bit better, but I know it's still long winded. Sorry for that!

[sdottaka]

Thank you for your explanation...

I apologize for my lack of understanding. To simplify the problem, I think you want to display only *[UHD].mkv files or .mkv files that do not contain [UHD], but the problem is that unnecessary folders and files are displayed. Do I understand correctly?

The filter I presented before was to exclude folders that do not contain [UHD]. However, this alone will also display files other than those with the mkv extension.

For this reason, I think it would be better to use a filter like the one below.

#2709_include_UHD.flt

name: #2709_include_UHD
desc: #2709_include_UHD

def: exclude

d: \\.*\[UHD\].*$
f: \.mkv$

Also, conversely, a filter to exclude folders that contain [UHD] would look like the following.

#2709_exclude_UHD.flt

name: #2709_exlude_UHD
desc: #2709_exlude_UHD

def: include

d: \\.*\[UHD\].*$
f: ^(?!.*\.mkv$).*

If my understanding is completely wrong, I would appreciate it if you could show me an example of the folder comparison results you actually expect and the actual folder comparison results.

[adelphiaUK]

You are correct in what you surmise this time, sorry it took a bit more for me to explain.

In the end, I found it easier to just do one folder at a time, and I just selected [UHD] folders from my folder list and then filter .mkv files. It didn't take as much time as I thought it would.

I did continue to use WinMerge and used it effectively, using a standard filtering method (*.mkv), to help me determine which folders had already been recovered and which had not.

I do thank you for your time and explanation which has helped me have a better understanding on how WinMerge works and can be used, especially for those more complex of needs.

Chris