Actually, the original poster (me) very trying to solve a different problem. I clearly specified that what was wanted is a perl program to convert the output of the Windows dir command into a structured text format suitable for use with sort and/or loading into a database.
This would let me see what will be impacted by a partial restore. It also has the benefit of not needing anything installed on my wife's machine (which is the target of the backup) -- not rsync, not find, not even perl. Having a "canonical" format for file information also allows comparison with the list produced by many other programs, e.g. ls, find, Sequoia View, Wilbur, any other backup program, etc. My suggested format was: Path|file|extension|Dir_or_File|bytes|date|time e.g. C:\_from_laptop\AAA BBB_files|empty.jpg|txt|Dir|0|2003-04-14|23:00 So the natural sort works as desired and it is also easy to be a timestamp based sort. I continue to think about that original problem. I realize that I should probably force bytes to 0 if type is Dir. The program probably should have an option to change between slash and backslash, and possibly suppress the drive letter. I might actually write this program one day; if I do I'll post it here for feedback. P.S. I tried to find a version of rsync for Windows that does not require cygwin. Is there one? Hopefully helpfully yours, Steve -- Steve Tolkin Steve . Tolkin at FMR dot COM 617-563-0516 Fidelity Investments 82 Devonshire St. V13C Boston MA 02109 There is nothing so practical as a good theory. Comments are by me, not Fidelity Investments, its subsidiaries or affiliates. -----Original Message----- From: Chris Devers [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, September 26, 2005 2:16 PM To: John Macdonald Cc: boston-pm@mail.pm.org; Ricker, William; Tolkin, Steve Subject: Re: [Boston.pm] Quotes and such [was] RE: script to "normalize" output of Windows dir command On Mon, 26 Sep 2005, John Macdonald wrote: > On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 12:48:08PM -0400, Ricker, William wrote: > > Chris Devers was however obviously looking for this rather specific > > elaboration of Santayana's, as it captures the inevitableness. > > > > [ "Any sufficiently complicated c or fortran program contains an ad hoc > > informally- > > [ specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp." > > [ -Greenspun's 10th law of programming > > [ http://philip.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=000tgU > > > > Note - there are no laws (1..9). > > Actually, I think he was looking for Henry Spencer's old quote: > "Those who do not understand Unix are doomed to reinvent it > - badly." Either of those, actually :-) AS I say, I'm sure there's some witty nugget of a reformulation of those lines based around this thread and rsync -- the Unix variant is nice and succinct, while the Lisp one gets more specific -- but I can't be bothered to tease it out. In any case, the point stands: the original poster was looking for a way to solve a problem in Perl that rsync already has tackled. Perl is a nice tool and suitable for many purposes, but there are limits beyond which even the roundest of reinvented wheels can get no rounder, and rsync is clearly the roundest wheel for this job :-) -- Chris Devers ÝSB½ÚF5† {Dp _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list Boston-pm@mail.pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
