Create Folder from Disk

The Create Folder from Disk button is available on the collection toolbar when an AceText Collection tab is active. When you click it, a dialog box pops up. Select the folder you want to add. You can enter or paste the path to the folder in the edit box at the top. Or you can click on the folder in the folder tree.

When you OK the dialog, AceText adds a new folder to your clip collection. The name of the folder on disk that you selected is used as the label of the new clip folder. The full path to the folder on disk is used as the clip folder’s URL. If you ticked “Add subfolders” in the dialog, then any subfolders of the folder on disk are added as subfolders to the new clip folder. The “Add empty folders” checkbox then determines whether clip folders are added for subfolders that don’t contain any files matching the file mask.

Inside the new clip folders, AceText adds one clip for each file inside the folder on disk. It loads the files in the same way as the Create Clip from Text File command.

If you don't specify a file mask, all files are added. If you do specify a file mask, only files matching the file mask are added.

In a file mask, the asterisk (*) represents any number (including none) of any character, similar to .* in a regular expression. The question mark (?) represents one single character, similar . in a regular expression. The file mask *.txt tells AceText to add any file with a .txt extension.

File masks also support a simple character class notation, which matches one character from a list or a range of characters. To add all web logs from September 2003, for example, use a file mask such as www.200309[0123][0-9].log or www.200309??.log. To add a literal opening square bracket to a file mask, you need to place it into a character class. The closing square bracket has no special meaning outside of a character class. If you want to add a literal closing square bracket to a character class, place it immediately after the opening square bracket. So the file mask *[[][0-9]].txt matches file names like whatever [1].txt. In this file mask, [[] is a literal opening bracket, [0-9] is a single digit, and ] is a literal closing bracket.

You can delimit multiple file masks with any mixture of semicolons, commas, and line breaks. A file is added if it matches at least one of the file masks in your list. To add all C source and header files, use *.c;*.h. To add a literal semicolon or comma to a file mask, either place the semicolon or comma between square brackets, or place the whole file mask between double quotes. The file mask *[,]*.txt;"*;*.doc" adds all .txt files that have a comma in their name, and all .doc files that have a semicolon in their name.

A file mask is only considered to match the file name if it matches the whole file name. The mask *.txt matches joe.txt, but not joe.txt.doc since the latter does not end in txt. You could use the mask *.txt* to match both.

See Capture, Enter and Store Text to learn how to use AceText.