Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!ames!bionet!agate!shelby!neon!pescadero.Stanford.EDU!philip
From: philip@pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Philip Machanick)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: Wanted Finder-feature
Message-ID: <1990Dec10.230640.18609@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 10 Dec 90 23:06:40 GMT
References: <1990Dec10.075144.17681@lth.se> <1990Dec10.220619.13452@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System)
Reply-To: philip@pescadero.stanford.edu
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Lines: 26

In article <1990Dec10.220619.13452@portia.Stanford.EDU>, ralphm@elaine22.stanford.edu (Ralph Melton) writes:
|> I'd like an item in the Edit menu, just above "Select All", that says
|> "Select Pattern."  You'd select this menu item, specify a wild-card pattern
|> somehow, and then it would select all the files in the current folder that
|> had names matching the pattern.  So in one fell swoop, for instance, you
|> could select all the files in a folder called "Backup of *" and drag them
|> to the trash at once.
[...]
Just to comment on this specific request - you are already halfway there
with the "View By" feature, which makes it possible to view in aplhabetic
order, by date, etc. All that's needed is an extension to the menu
  View by Other ...
which would pop up a dialog in which you typed a pattern. Anything
matching the pattern would be at the top of the list, ready to grab
and drag the the trash, double click on etc. This could be modelled on
the Sort feature of spreadsheets, where you could sort by more than
one attribute (pattern, then date etc.).

Combined with the System 7 feature of viewing the directory tree in a
window, this could allow some interesting variations, like allowing a
pattern to include folder names.

Given the lateness of System 7, don't expect any of this to appear soon.
-- 
Philip Machanick
philip@pescadero.stanford.edu