XYplorer Beta Club

This wish coincides with probably the "undo" feature.
Is it possible to have a detailed log of al lthe actions i do on XY? Actions like copying files, deleting them, renaming them etc. I think in many cases i would find this extremely useful because most of my time spent on file manager is to hunt for files and trying to remember what actions i did earlier.

I know this means XY actively writing logs all the time which could be resource consuming (?), but if user could choose what logs to keep and what logs to ignore this could really help a lot in my opinion. A low level logging would be to just monitor what files are deleted or moved etc.

Imagine looking for some renamed files or moved files in some place which you remember working yesterday. Now with this feature you can go to yesterday's log at a specific time and look up what you exactly did. voila you know where it is now.
Does this make sense? i guess future undo with not undo actions to this extent, but the logic is somewhat same.

serendipity wrote:Imagine looking for some renamed files or moved files in some place which you remember working yesterday. Now with this feature you can go to yesterday's log at a specific time and look up what you exactly did. voila you know where it is now.
Does this make sense?

I could see this useful also to locate exactly where user drag-n-drop'd files when they ended up in a unintended location...

Theer are various ways to do this, such as day-by-day, or a numeric limit of entries or such, but in any case, I do agree this feature would be good to have.

Yes, I have this on my list, filed under "audit trail". It is indeed related to Undo, and whenever I do one of them I'll do the other as well.

admin wrote:Yes, I have this on my list, filed under "audit trail". It is indeed related to Undo, and whenever I do one of them I'll do the other as well.

Thanks Don, I am glad its on your list, but with so much to do with DP and other features, I am expecting this only next year. Happy coding!

serendipity wrote:

admin wrote:Yes, I have this on my list, filed under "audit trail". It is indeed related to Undo, and whenever I do one of them I'll do the other as well.

Thanks Don, I am glad its on your list, but with so much to do with DP and other features, I am expecting this only next year. Happy coding!

By the way, are you aware of any standard format for such action logs? (I dislike the term "audit trail"... )

You're talking about the format of the content of the log, I suppose?
Because the name "action log" sounds fine for me.

As for content, there might be various formats I guess, but what I would expect is a timestamp, command ID and name of action performed, all sortable of course.
It might become a bit hairy when it comes to scripts: do you log only the script name or all the actions performed by it as well?

RalphM wrote:It might become a bit hairy when it comes to scripts: do you log only the script name or all the actions performed by it as well?

I would think that the name of the current "routine" that executed the cmd should be logged...

But then there could be a subroutine...so maybe something like:
Main routine (current routine) timestamp command actions
So even if there may be some intermediate routines, only the highest level and actual routine would be listed...
When there is no script, then it would just have "XYplorer (Main)" or similar...

I'd think using some std delimiters that would make import to Excel or other spreadsheet easier, such as a CSV or tab-delimited format, would be a good idea as well.

RalphM wrote:As for content, there might be various formats I guess, but what I would expect is a timestamp, command ID and name of action performed, all sortable of course.

Yes, something like that. I just wonder if there is a (de facto) standard for this. In that case I would prefer to follow it.

all sortable of course: you mean, separated by (e.g.) TABs, or what?

admin wrote:Yes, something like that. I just wonder if there is a (de facto) standard for this. In that case I would prefer to follow it.

I'd see what the competing products have for layout/format as a basis...and if there seems to be a pattern there..

all sortable of course: you mean, separated by (e.g.) TABs, or what?

Tab separated would be compatible with import to a spreadsheet for sorting if needed.

admin wrote:all sortable of course: you mean, separated by (e.g.) TABs, or what?

Yep, whatever separator that enables us to sort column wise, either in Excel but in the viewer itself would be even better...

Sorry i was not following this for a while, but all sounds good to me. Yes, sortable is the important part, as long as its exportable to CSV kind of format its fine.
Wow, basically you will sew this log together with the actions and that makes "undo" right?