It seems so simple to me: I have a list of legacy files I want to
operate on via BBEdit. The files exist in multiple directories, all
of which have the same name (the files grandparent directories are,
of course, different). It's trivial via unix shell commands to get
the list of files I want to change. There are a lot of files, a few
hundred, and I could open them all in BBEdit though I don't need
really them open, I need them in a search result set or a filegroup.
I could plop the individual directories in a file group, though they
all have the same name, so there's no way to easily tell if I've done
it right. If BBEdit had an option to show the full path to the folder
(or a virtual path from a web server on the same machine), that would
help.
I can do a search for something which appears in each file. This is
good, now I have a Search Results browser which I can use for
subsequent search/replace operations. Although it would be great if I
could save these search results and use them later: in this case I
have no need to repeat the search. I investigated the Saved Search
Sources, but this only preselects the multi-file search sources.
I did try saving the search results browser, via 'Save As' (the
'Save' option is greyed out), and this opens as a BBEdit text file.
If I could save these such that when reopened they come up as search
result browsers that would really help.
I even investigated trying to use local ftp URLs in File Groups, but
could not get this to work either. In any case I really don't want to
drag hundreds of ftp URLs into a File Group. If BBEdit could open
URLs in file groups, mapping to the corresponding local server dir,
that would be great (and give me the virtual pathnames of my files,
solving the issue of different but same-named folders and files).
What it seems I need to do is save the Search Patterns (which would
be ok if I could find a way to delete them, I'd rather not clog up my
Patterns list with tons of patterns I will only use a few times),
repeat the searches each time I want to operate on these files, and
thus get the Search Results browsers up again. (If I could name them,
that would help: 'Search Results 5' isn't that memorable).
Sorry for ranting, but I think my request is reasonable yet I'm
reduced to trying to hack subtle BBEdit options to get what I need,
which seems like a lot of mostly useless work. Perhaps a future
BBEdit could create and read RSS feeds or something where the entries
are individual files which could then be placed into a File Group or
some such.
Call me old, the best 'File Groups' like utility I saw was in the old
Homesite 3 'Projects'. It had an option to add all open files to a
project (which would really help me in BBEdit) and was also text-
based and thus easily hackable. (Later Homesites made this more
complicated).
So when does BBEdit Pro come out? :-)
-Mike
Michael Wiik
Messagenet Communications Research
Washington, DC Area Web Development
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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