XYplorer Beta Club
Yes, I could script this, and may, but I think it's likely to be a useful feature for many - and uniquely powerful:
I'd like to be able to choose a copy depth for auto-merging directories.
For example: If I were copying multiple ripped CDs, and they're organized by composer/artist, to an external disk, I might want to copy everything to my music directory that would already have subfolders for composers, so I select yes, go ahead and merge my current batch of CD rips.
The only problem is, since i have a huge CD collection, and I'm combining it with my father's collection, I forgot that I already ripped this CD (I tend to do them in a stack while doing other things, and I usually use a fast working disk with most of my externals disconnected). Since I have a script that assigns folder names, the composer/artist are the same (and auto-merge at this point) and the folder for the ripped CD are the same; however, in this case the files are named differently. So, I've suddenly got a ripped CD folder with two sets of the same data and there was no warning about duplicates on the folder name.
Were I able to select a merge depth of 1 (for merging with the composer/artist folder), or 2 (if I merged a music folder, which then auto-merged to composer folders, so depth=2), I would get a warning "Folder exists: Merge Skip Rename Continue All" if it attempted to merge a duplicate on level 3 or below. This might also happen if I were backing up files and I had changed from CD1, CD2 etc. to 01-01., 01-02., 02-01, 02-02, etc. - which I do fairly frequently.
I think this particular functionality would give XY's copy utility a uniquely powerful feature when compared to other copy utilities.
An alternative might be a notice about merging level one, then a warning the first time a level 2 depth folder merge happens, and so on: "Do you want to merge down another level? Yes No Rename Dups"
This, of course, since it's a unique (set) of behaviors, would be most suitable for a Configuration option - if only to force people to read about the behavior. Both methods might be useful to have as options; and, it seems to me, would largely overlap in development time.
When using Fast Copy, Teracopy as defaults, one would lose this behavior - so what? (I personally have them set up with separate buttons anyway, using Teracopy for long copy operations, especially if I want a post copy choice to compare checksums, or I want to use a copy then delete workflow.)
Thanks for considering this. I'm sorry this post got quite long, but I wanted to explain in detail a situation where it would definitely be useful.