"is not among the"

Talk, speculate, discuss, pontificate. As long as it pertains to Hazel.

Moderators: Mr_Noodle, Moderators

Should Hazel include rules listed ahead of "Is Not Among The" when running the rule?

Yes, the current behavior is too broad and moves things I don't want moved.
13
72%
No, I like the current behavior and am okay with not having an option for retaining or moving the most current file type in a mixed folder of files.
0
No votes
I don't really understand what would change and what this poll is asking.
5
28%
 
Total votes : 18

"is not among the" Tue May 10, 2016 11:52 am • by skillet
Paul Kim suggested to post here to get people's thoughts on the current behavior of Hazel with the rule "is not among the"

Image

Currently the behavior is that it will look at all files in the folder and disregard the other rules above it, so if you add an extension like .doc and are looking at keeping the most recent .doc file it will disregard the rule above looking for a .doc and move the file if it is not the most recent even if it is an image, movie, spreadsheet etc. even a folder!
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 10:51 am • by Mr_Noodle
Just to add to the discussion:
  • It might be helpful not only to vote on how you want it to work, but also looking at the example, how you expect it to work. I'd probably need to support both ways, but knowing this would be helpful in determining which behavior is the default.
  • Also, if you have an idea, how should it interact with other conditions that come after it? How about conditions in nested conditions?

I'll stay out of the voting but am very interested to see how you guys vote (and comment) on this.
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 11:28 am • by Curlypaws
I'd probably prefer that it kept the most recent file of the type specified by the combination of the other 'all conditions' items as this is what I would expect looking at it initially. I'm struggling to imagine where I'd want the other behaviour to occur as it would seem perverse to want to select an item from a selection that I had thought was excluded.

I presume that this would then apply for any use of the "not among the" condition regardless of whether it was date linked or not?
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 11:43 am • by Mr_Noodle
I'd expect "among/not among" to work the same. If you do "Kind is image and Date not among the 1 most recent" then I'd expect it would match all images that are not the most recent. But if you have another more recent non-image, it won't affect things.

How you would consider the following?
Code: Select all
Date is not among the 1 most recent
If (all) are met (for the current file)
    Kind is Image


Does the "among the" apply to images even though it's in a subcondition?
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 11:56 am • by Curlypaws
Mr_Noodle wrote:Does the "among the" apply to images even though it's in a subcondition?


I guess that I wouldn't expect sub conditions to have an effect on the higher level condition. It would only be for conditions at the same level. But whether this would be obvious to someone trying to set up a check is another matter. At least the new preview feature introduced with v4 is a big help!
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 12:33 pm • by MiGrant
Took me a while to figure out (I think...) what the issue even is. So based on the screenshot, are you saying the proposed new behavior would be to look only for the not-most-recent .cpr file, instead of not-most-recent files of any kind? I still don't understand your description of the current behavior though — if the rule is set to "all conditions", shouldn't a file that fails the extension test still not be matched, regardless of how the not-most-recent test is interpreted?
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 12:39 pm • by Mr_Noodle
MiGrant: You're interpretation is correct. Yes, if it isn't a cpr it won't matter, but if it is a cpr, but there's another more recent file that isn't a cpr, then it that's where the behavior matters.
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 12:44 pm • by manonlaco
If all of the above listed conditions in the example are to be met, I would expect that Hazel would only consider files with the .cpr extension for archival while leaving other file types and folders intact. All of the conditions need to be met, despite their order in the condition list.

Should the user want to move all files and folders that are not among the most recent, the "Extension is .cpr" would need to be removed from the condition list.
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 1:10 pm • by JBB
I'm not following this. There is an option for "date last modified IS among the x most recent", so why isn't that the solution?
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 1:42 pm • by skillet
manonlaco wrote:If all of the above listed conditions in the example are to be met, I would expect that Hazel would only consider files with the .cpr extension for archival while leaving other file types and folders intact. All of the conditions need to be met, despite their order in the condition list.

Should the user want to move all files and folders that are not among the most recent, the "Extension is .cpr" would need to be removed from the condition list.


Yes, exactly that is what I expected too! It took me a bit of time to figure out that it wasn't doing that since I had other rules that I thought were affecting things. I wonder how many people looking at those rules would expect that it is only looking at files with .cpr like I did.

JBB wrote:I'm not following this. There is an option for "date last modified IS among the x most recent", so why isn't that the solution?


Because it included everything including newly added folders and this is trying to only move .cpr files that are not the 1 most recent. If you are only dealing with one file type in a folder it doesn't really matter.
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 3:24 pm • by Mr_Noodle
JBB: the issue is an interpretation of how that works. Right now, it works like every other condition in that it's pretty much independent of every other condition in the rule. What's being asked here is how people expect/want it to work, with some saying that it should only apply to the files that matched the other conditions. Basically, does that condition apply to all the files in the same folder, or just the ones that match the other conditions in the rule.

This would be the first time a condition would behave like that so I'll need to consider the change carefully but I want to at least gauge users' expectations and desires on this.
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 3:33 pm • by skillet
Mr_Noodle wrote:This would be the first time a condition would behave like that so I'll need to consider the change carefully but I want to at least gauge users' expectations and desires on this.


I think it is important to keep consistency so a nested rule seems like the way to go and then nothing would be broken with the new behavior and it would make it possible for the task to be accomplished.
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Re: "is not among the" Wed May 11, 2016 5:09 pm • by Mr_Noodle
Or I could turn it around. If this new behavior is what is expected, I can make it work like described here, and to get the old behavior, you use a nested condition. When the update is installed, I can rewrite the rule conditions so that it behaves like before, though it may look different.

But for now, I want to nail down what the expected behavior should be. I'm pretty confident I can work something out so that both options are available.
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Re: "is not among the" Thu May 12, 2016 3:20 pm • by Mr_Noodle
Here's another wrinkle to consider. Suppose someone wants the most recent out of a pool of different types of files. For instance:
Code: Select all
If (all) are met
    Date is among the 1 most recent
    If (any) are met for (the current file)
        Extension is txt
        Extension is docx
        Extension is pdf

Though in this case it's "any" instead of "all". There's no reason to do nested "all"s in general so maybe that's a special exception.
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Re: "is not among the" Thu May 12, 2016 3:37 pm • by skillet
Mr_Noodle wrote:Though in this case it's "any" instead of "all". There's no reason to do nested "all"s in general so maybe that's a special exception.


Yeah I can't think of any reason to do an "all" if you are doing a nested for a file extension unless you were for some reason trying to have it look at only the most recent of all those file types and only keep one of the files instead of one of each or something.
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