Total Commander

ghisler(Author) wrote:This is normal because the search is performed in the foreground thread. Reason: Plugins and some unpackers used by the search are not guaranteed to support multi-threading.

As previously indicated in another post: find files search can''t run as a background thread in the current totalcmd.exe process space. Would you consider a "background" button on find files dialog that creates another process of totalcmd.exe AFTER saving the current state settings and leaves the search running in first process. Ideally first process would miniimize and flash the system tray icon when its done searching. That would allow you to keep working while the search runs in first process. Searching several GB of data for a text string can take a while and sometimes it is during a search I think to myself I should have really saved settings of current totalcmd.exe and started a new copy to run this search

I know you could just start another copy of totalcmdr.exe yourself but your current settings are not in that one because the other running process has not done a save settings (and you cant do it because the foreground thread is busy). Anyone care to comment if they have thought about this.

2moderators - this thread should be moved to the Polls section.

2SkipR
This is the place to put polls: Total Commander Polls (English).

I would vote "Yes" if it was possible. Unfortunately, it's not. You cannot save the compete state of TC so that after restarting (or starting a new instance) you had absolutely the same working environment. For example, TC does not store: cursor position, scrollbar position, current focus (in left/right panel, command line, button bar), current selection, previous selection (the one restored by Num/), text typed in command line and not yet executed, and so on and so forth.

Of course, theoretically, Ghisler could implement saving all those parameters but it seems to me to be harder than implementing background search by starting new totalcmd.exe instance from the very beginning (which was proposed already), just like SyncDirs or Lister (/S or /L command-line arguments).

Sounds like a good idea to me. Voted *YES*

Flint wrote:I would vote "Yes" if it was possible. Unfortunately, it's not. You cannot save the compete state of TC so that after restarting (or starting a new instance) you had absolutely the same working environment. For example, TC does not store: cursor position, scrollbar position, current focus (in left/right panel, command line, button bar), current selection, previous selection (the one restored by Num/), text typed in command line and not yet executed, and so on and so forth.

Of course, theoretically, Ghisler could implement saving all those parameters but it seems to me to be harder than implementing background search by starting new totalcmd.exe instance from the very beginning (which was proposed already), just like SyncDirs or Lister (/S or /L command-line arguments).

Interesting point, I would be happy with what is currently the "save state" (= what settings are currently saved on shutdown to wincmd.ini). Perhaps the proposed button would stop current search, do a save settings (ie wincmd.ini is updated), start a new instance of TC and pass it the search which runs (even if from the beginning again in another window). I think that's what you meant in your second paragraph. The end result would be the same - a search running in background while still allowing you to work in another TC instance (in that scenario you are in the original instance). Of course up to Ghisler to decide which implementation is the simpler solution. I think "Search" is the only function that has no send to "background" ability in TC.

SkipR
Ghisler already implemented search in separate process in 8.50. So, I suppose, there is no more need in the discussed button.