Total Commander

Hello Christian, it seems TC has lack of an important feature: Undo.
I understand that it's not so easy to implement, but it's possible to use
recycle bin and some tricks.
And many hasty people will say thanks for ability to revert their
thoughtless actions
Also, there is no one in other file managers. It will be unique!

I'm supporting Undo only in one place, where it's guaranteed to work: the multi-rename tool. In other functions where users can choose to overwrite files or delete permanently, Undo cannot be guaranteed.

A few other file managers already offer undo functionality. In my experience, the Dopus undo works well.

As undo dependency chains lengthen, the ability to guarantee a correct "undo" irreversibly deteriorates, while the overhead needed to identify all "reversible" dependencies balloons dramatically. However, for many cases, the dependency chain is either very short or very static. In those examples, and with proper validation, a correct undo result could be guaranteed and would be productive for the user.

In rare emergencies, I have parsed the TC log to identify undo chains, then manually reversed them, for a successful result. Certainly such behavior could be coded, since TC already collects the "way points".

Of course, 'undo' feature is not a panacea against uncontrolled actions...
And it is normal when it will be displayed sometimes 'undo is not possible'.
But even in this case it will be very useful feature!
(and it will save much hair of somebody's head )

Would a one-step undo be guaranteeable?
I once per two years I do the following: Mark a few folders say to calculate size, scroll up -phone rings and while talking I see a folder that definitely needs deleting, mark it, routinely Shift Delete it and only then realize there were a few other folders marked....

In my win98 days this was rarely a disaster, some recovery programs really worked, but using Windows 7 there is much more disk activity, so I'd rather need an alarm button to lock the drive.

Yes I do back up, but situations like these always hit the 'this week I really should...' cases.

HAL 9000 wrote:Would a one-step undo be guaranteeable?

Sometimes it would not and it is normal.

HAL 9000 wrote:...routinely Shift Delete it and only then realize there were a few other folders marked....

Such programs as Undelete and similar can revert such changes
without problems, especially when it is not much time passed by.

The question is: will the author want to implement such functionality?
Otherwise, only Delete (without Shift) will be undone using Recycle Bin.

Shift-delete is a nearly impossible habit to break, plus1 on your description of accidentally executing directories. another is mouse slips due to no confirm on copy. not destructive, but can be an unbelievable pita when your filenames are nearly useless, (and their content changes constantly, so compare is less than straightforward).

Regarding undo, actions fall into one of two categories.

1. Actions that can be undone.
2. Actions that cannot be undone.

If it is possible to know which category applies to a specific action, then it is possible to enable an undo feature in cases where the action can be undone. For example, in copying specific files, if TC can determine that no files would be overwritten, then undo could be enabled for that copy action.