Directory Groups

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MS Windows XP (circa 2004/5) has certainly IMPROVED the 'information' offered by 'Windows Explorer' ... Not only have they added two more 'views' - Thumbnails and Tiles to Icons, List and Details - the 'ToolTip' popup, if you are patient, gives folder information ... but sometimes not enough ...

w32-01.png image w32-02.png image

If I want to archive 'My Documents' to a CD-ROM, of say 600 MB, then this is TOO LARGE! How to divide it up ... yes, with immense patience, you can 'hover' over each folder ... wait for the TOOLTIP to arrive ... and calculate ... so I wrote a 'tool' to do this ... I called it DIRG, standing for 'Directory Groups' ... I have installed my DIRG.EXE in one of the paths given in my PATH environment variable ... so I can drop to the command prompt ... navigate to this folder ... and run DIRG ...

It produces, and asks the system to display, this HTML file ... seen in full here ... and it outputs a DOS screen summary ... like - giving the name of each folder, it byte total, an 'adjusted' byte total, folders and files found ... ending with the totals ...

C:\Documents and Settings\Geoff McLane\My Documents>dirg
Processing folder [C:\Documents and Settings\Geoff McLane\My Documents] ... from [.] ...
., 923.9 KB, 927.5 KB, 39, 9
Annie, 318 KB, 319.5 KB,0,3
Basic, 107.5 KB, 108.5 KB,0,4
Carla, 3.5 MB, 3.5 MB,9,87
CV, 546.2 KB, 558 KB,2,36
CyberLink, 0.5 KB, 0.5 KB,1,1
Exetel, 422 KB, 429.5 KB,0,15
Fax, 0.5 KB, 0.5 KB,1,0
FG, 10.1 MB, 10.1 MB,1,73
Friday_files, 29.5 KB, 38 KB,0,28
Geoff, 55 KB, 61 KB,1,18
Irene, 169.2 KB, 171 KB,1,6
Jane, 186.5 KB, 190.5 KB,0,8
Jobs, 4.6 MB, 4.7 MB,1,70
Kathy, 19 MB, 19 MB,1,28
Louis, 146.5 MB, 147.3 MB,163,3,030
louis_test_files, 0.9 KB, 1 KB,0,1
Marc, 34.6 MB, 34.6 MB,5,82
Maree, 72.8 KB, 74 KB,0,4
Mira6, 495.4 MB, 495.4 MB,4,43
Misc, 726.1 KB, 738 KB,1,31
MS, 419.1 KB, 422 KB,1,8
My Albums, 1.7 MB, 1.7 MB,0,4
My Archives, 0.1 KB, 0.5 KB,0,1
My eBooks, 0 KB, 0 KB,0,0
My Music, 0.8 KB, 1.5 KB,0,2
My Photos, 0 KB, 0 KB,0,0
My Pictures, 86.1 MB, 86.2 MB,4,107
My Received Files, 0 KB, 0 KB,0,0
My Skype Pictures, 932 KB, 941 KB,0,40
My Skype Received Files, 4.5 MB, 4.5 MB,0,2
My Videos, 0.2 KB, 0.5 KB,0,1
My Webs, 131.2 KB, 143.5 KB,6,48
Publish, 153.2 KB, 158 KB,1,13
Sue, 1.5 MB, 1.5 MB,0,10
Theo, 306 KB, 312 KB,0,12
Uwe, 16.4 MB, 16.4 MB,0,25
Visual Studio, 647.2 KB, 647.5 KB,8,1
Visual Studio Projects, 602.5 KB, 603.5 KB,3,2
Work, 669.6 KB, 680 KB,1,26
Totals, 831.2 MB, 832.4 MB, 851,191,681, 852,355,584
C:\, 117.2 GB, 71.5 GB, 8,512

Note the TOOLTIP shows 811 MB, while the above totals show 831-832 MB ... I have added some more doing this ;=))

Now it is easier to review, understand, see ... and make good CD-ROM burning decisions ...  the source is here, and the WIN32 runtime here ... remember, download and use at your own risk ... ;=))

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NOTES:

A > DIR /S command yields only the 'visible' file total ... to this, add
a > DIR /S /AH command - then, the new
  > DIRG command - gives the important lines -

 3852 File(s) 849,380,796 bytes
   27 File(s)   1,777,897 bytes
 3879 Sub-tot.851,158,693 ... versus ... dirg
 3879 Totals  851,288,741, or 852,452,352

Still have not fully resolved the exact nature of the MINIMAL difference ... ;=)) but, in the DIRG total is an allocation of 512 bytes for each FOLDER ... maybe a later 'fix' ...

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