Hazel`s long term memory (?)

I have set up hazel as the "engine" behind an automated photo archiving system (with about 40.000 image files (& in combination with zenphoto)), at some point in this process I made a rule that was supposed to fix file extensions ... now, due to a bit clumsy use I also ended up with x number of thousand folders with a .tif ending in the folder name :-)

In addition I also used a script that hides extensions occasionally, (for comparing file names only) unfortunately some of these folders did for a while get stuck with a hidden .tif ending ... :-)

I have fixed these problems now, but Hazel seems to "remember" these folders as tif files and I regularly get growl errors that various errors happens when a script tries to set dpi or colour profiles on these folders. While this does not do any damage and over the last three weeks these error messages has almost disappeared, I wonder for how long hazel will remember a file / folder with wrong information.. or if there has been (is) some problem with hazels database.. (or the spotlight database) ?

(In the support forum as I did not see a forum for "new and amazing problems one can produce with hazel" : -)

are you running rules and storing files in the same directory?

Can you post/email the errors you are seeing? Hazel doesn't care about whether extensions are hidden. Also, if you could email me your rules, I might better understand what's going wrong. As it stands, it doesn't quite make sense as Hazel could care less if a folder has a tif extension if you send it to something to be processed. My guess is an error in the script but again, I would need more details to figure that out.

To email, use the "Contact support" button in the "Info" tab.

Mr_Noodle wrote:Can you post/email the errors you are seeing? Hazel doesn't care about whether extensions are hidden. Also, if you could email me your rules, I might better understand what's going wrong. As it stands, it doesn't quite make sense as Hazel could care less if a folder has a tif extension if you send it to something to be processed. My guess is an error in the script but again, I would need more details to figure that out.

To email, use the "Contact support" button in the "Info" tab.

Thanks for response : -)

sorry no error messages today, (which is good : -) , but as I remember, most of the messages went something like "error ... (file) xxx is a directory", my impression was that I kept getting hits for a long time after I had changed both folder names and rules, but it is quite possible that other rules was causing it instead .. reading my above post I realize that identifying which rule should have been easy as I got growl messages & only some rules was growl enabled ..., but all rules has been changed now.

I did notice a number of error messages in the log today that said; could not retrieve metadata from file. I currently have no rules going on metadata, but did experiment with some rules like "if description is blank, label file as grey" last week.

will keep an eye on that and mail you the messages if it repeats tomorrow. (or monday).

I think my question is, for how long time will hazel remember that it was supposed to do something? (if that makes sense), And will hazel try to repeat doing something if it once tried, but had an error returned? (despite a change in circumstances)

but, thanks, this helped me focus a bit : -)

Well, if there is an error running a rule, Hazel will keep trying though it always re-matches against the current state so if things change, it will act accordingly. If Hazel does match a rule and execute it without error, Hazel will remember having done that so it won't keep running that rule over and over again on that particular file if it continues to match.

Basically, though, when matching, Hazel will always match against the current state of the file. You can try using the preview which doesn't record anything at all to compare but they should line up, in terms of matching (as opposed to executing).