Exclude Mask?

G

g33n

New Member
Hello,

I,am tesing your program to see if i can erase all files except the ones i want to exclude
I got it working with 1 file name
But if i want to exclude multiple files i can,t find the right parameter
I have tryed , * " / etc.. but nothing works!
I also googled it and searched the forum and read the whole help file that came with the application
But i could not find the parameter that was needed

Please help me with this simpel task :)

Thanks in advanced
 
On the relatively rare occasions I have used the masking facility, it has worked with normal, old-fashioned Windows/DOS file masks. So, for example, if you are excluding all JPEG files from the Erase you put '*.jpg' in the Exclude box. If you want to exclude all JPEG files with names beginning with 'Bob', you put Bob*.jpg in the Exclude box. And so on. To do this, it really helps to enable the Windows Folder preference to show all extensions, but I do this in any case.

If you are using the Command Line Interface, I believe that the arrangement is the same.

Note for Joel: we need to put a specific mention of this in the manual.

David
 
thanks for the fast reply

but i think i asked my question wrong because i would like to know the parameter/wildcard if i want to exclude multiple files.
for instance i would like to use eraser to erase all files except the ones that came with windows.

so i thought i put in filename1' filename2' filename3' etc... in the exclude mask box but this did not work.
and like you sayd i could exclude *.jpg but what if i wanted to exclude not only jpg but also png and bmp how would that look like?

i hope this is somewhat clearer?

and i hope you can help me out with this question

thanks in advanced
 
I have experimented, and subject to confirmation by Joel, I don't think that you can specify multiple masks of the kind you want. If you try to do this using the customary commas or semicolons as separators, the program simply behaves as though the mask is blank. This, incidentally, is a fail hard situation, and could easily lead to the erasure of data the user wants to keep; perhaps Joel needs to have a look at the logic here.

If what you are trying to do is erase all your data from a system (C:) drive and leave the Windows installation intact, I have to advise you that it is virtually impossible to do this reliably. While you can easily erase files from the more obvious places, the system squirrels data in so many places that a user would be very lucky to find them all. You could erase data as required from your own libraries, then use a utility such as CCleaner (which is free) to search out and erase as much of the rest as possible (CCleaner has the option to overwrite anything it removes). That will probably get you as close to 100% as you can safely go. If 100% is what you need, format your machine, restore the machine it to factory condition, and run a free space erase before reinstalling all your programs and patches; this is a big job, and you need to know what you are doing.

David
 
i already thought it was not possible because i tryed nearly all parameters/wildcards i could think of
but it would be an nice addition to a future version of eraser to select multiple folders or files to exclude instead of only extensions
david you idea of doing an full restore and then erase the empty data is a good idea.
i will try that and will hope to see a future version of eraser have the option i mentioned above
 
Okay, I'll open a ticket on Trac for this.
 
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