Current plans? How about autocreation of .sfv/.md5?

fryko · 2007-03-10 01:13

Hi,
What are your plans for the great little program Hasher? Do you aim to add more features or will it stay pretty much the same?

Here's an added feature I'd really like to see.

Make it easy to create (and later check) .sfv/.md5 files:

Create: select some files/folders in Explorer, right click, select "Make Hasher .sfv" and such a file with a list of values and filenames is automatically created. There are some programs that do this already (mostly only for .sfv though). I think HKSfv still is the most user friendly, but it seems abandoned. So this is a great chance for Hasher to fill the void!

Check: double click a created .sfv/.md5 and Hashers starts and check the values against files with matching names in the same folder as the .sfv/.md5

A quick hack that would allow something like that would be to add support for command line arguments for Hasher. That would involve: a hidden/minimized/non-GUI mode, accepting file paths and hash types as input parameters, calculated hash value as output. .sfv/.md5 creation could then be done through an external script that uses Hashers many times in sequence.

den4b · 2007-03-10 19:16

Hi fryko,

Lists of ideas for every of program that I develop are just growing and growing. I never planned to stop their development, but for the last year it becomes less and less of that free time that I can spend on the development. I still remember your previous suggestion:

- instead of a pop-up, show the comparison result in a field in the main window instead. When comparing several pairs of files, that would speed up things a bit. I guess it's hard to fit in all the info from the current popup in the current main window. Maybe a "minimal" mode could be set as an option. When in minimal mode, the comparison results in no popup. Instead, only the text "different" in red or "same" in green is shown somewhere in the main window.

And I would like to implement it, but yet had no time to do that. I put all of the suggestion onto "To Do" list, and will hopefully implement them sooner or later. Concerning you latest suggestion, about handling .sfv/.md5 files - I think it's a great idea! But it doesn't look like it can go together with Hasher, it would defiantly be better as a separate application. It all boils down to the luck of free time.

When i last touched Hasher, I've added a feature that writes the hashing results into the file and able to enqueue several files. Maybe that will be useful for you: HasherBeta.zip.

By the way, it might sound very strange, but I think ReNamer (another program of mine) is able to do all that .sfv/.md5 processing. It has a PascalScript rule, which is basically a programming interface which lets you do virtually anything with the files, including calculation of MD5, CRC32, SHA1. Without any renaming, it can process lists of files, calculate hashes, and create .sfv/.md5 file. You just need to write an appropriate script. Anyway, that's just a crazy thought

fryko · 2007-03-12 00:22

Hi,

thanks for the reply.

"Concerning you latest suggestion, about handling .sfv/.md5 files - I think it's a great idea! But it doesn't look like it can go together with Hasher, it would defiantly be better as a separate application. It all boils down to the luck of free time."

Yes, I guess it might be features more suited for a separate program. And I'll definitely try out ReNamer.

On the other hand (I never give up, do I? ), the "raw" features requested are not THAT far from what Hasher already does I think. As an example, with HkSFV i can select files in explorer, rightclick, click "Create Md5" and a .md5 file with a default name is generated in the files folder. With Hasher, I can select files in explorer, drag and drop onto Hasher, click "view" log, save the textfile as .md5 and choose a name and folder for it manually.

There's a small difference in the logfile/.md5-file format:
Hasher: t.txt 82d2cb46659960eda3924a2a416c5653
HkSFV: 82d2cb46659960eda3924a2a416c5653 *t.txt

Hasher could do what HkSFV does through some minor additions (minor in the sense that they wouldn't imply a big change of how Hasher works or its GUI layout). Here are two possible routes for that:

creating:
- if CTRL/SHIFT is held while files are dropped on Hasher, then go into .md5/.sfv making mode
- if in .md5/.sfv making mode, old log entries are temporarily ignored, a new list of names and hashes are compiled in the HkSFV compatible format (above) and the file is then saved in the same folder as the files that were dropped and with a default name (same as the dropped file if only one, parent folder name if multiple dropped files) plus extension .sfv/.md5.

checking:
- if a .sfv/.md5 file is dropped on Hasher (without CTRL/SHIFT being held), then go into .md5/.sfv checking mode
- if in .md5/.sfv checking mode, read dropped file line by line, for each line, get hash value and related name value, check if a file with matching name is in the same folder as the .sfv/.md5 file. If so, then calculate that files hash and compare to the hash in the .sfv/.md5. If all files verified ok then say that (in a popup or somewhere in the Hasher GUI). If not, then popup a list of files that failed the check.

I know HkSFV has some extras including a lot of fancy GUI parts. But that's not really needed to perform the task at hand: creating/checking .sfv/,md5 files.

Finally, I completely understand how hard it can be to get the time do work on all these apps. Let me emphasize that I don't intend to nag in anyway. I only intend to give feedback on a good program. And also toy with some ideas on how to make it even better.

Cheers

den4b · 2007-03-13 20:29

No , you never give up!

I really like your suggestions, especially the CTRL/SHIFT idea! It might come out very nice! I've added them to the "to do" list for Hasher. Its upto "the time" now, to allow me to implement this... Ohh, by the way, I was also planning to add MD4 hash, since it's used by eMule and other p2p networks (as suggested by another user).

den4b Forum

#1 2007-03-10 01:13

Current plans? How about autocreation of .sfv/.md5?

#2 2007-03-10 19:16

Re: Current plans? How about autocreation of .sfv/.md5?

#3 2007-03-12 00:22

Re: Current plans? How about autocreation of .sfv/.md5?

#4 2007-03-13 20:29

Re: Current plans? How about autocreation of .sfv/.md5?

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