Softanza's stzFolder: A Journey Through Intelligent Directory Navigation

Introduction

The examples follow a sequential workflow, showing how the class handles basic display, customization, selective expansion, and comprehensive tree exploration.

Starting Simple: Visual Tree Structure

We begin by creating a folder object and immediately see Softanza's visual philosophy in action:

o1 = new stzFolder("c:/testarea")
? o1.Show()

Output:

🗀 testarea
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─🖿 images
├─🗀 music
├─🖿 tempo
╰─🗀 videos

The output uses Unicode symbols to indicate file types and folder states: 🗋 for files, 🗀 for empty folders, and 🖿 for folders containing items.

Enhanced Mode: Statistics That Matter

The ShowXT() method reveals another layer of thoughtful design:

? o1.ShowXT()

Output:

📁 testarea (6)
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 Docs
├─🖿 images (4)
├─🗀 music
├─🖿 tempo (2)
╰─🗀 videos

The XT mode switches to a folder icon (📁) and adds numerical counts showing elements at each level. The root contains 6 elements total, while subfolders like images (4) and tempo (2) display their own counts. The statistics follow a default pattern, but Softanza's flexibility allows complete customization.

Customization: Your Statistics, Your Way

Checking the current display pattern:

? o1.DisplayStat() + NL
#--> "@count"

Now let's make it more descriptive:

o1.SetDisplayStat('@CountFiles files, @CountFolders folders')
? o1.ShowXT()

Output:

📁 testarea (1 files, 5 folders)   # Your stats displayed here
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─🖿 images (2 files, 2 folders)   # And here
├─🗀 music
├─🖿 tempo (2 files)               # And here
╰─🗀 videos

The custom statistics now appear throughout the tree, providing context at each level. This customization allows the same tool to serve different analysis requirements.

Granular Insights: Deep vs. Surface Counts

For comprehensive analysis, we can distinguish between immediate and recursive counts:

o1.SetDisplayStat('
	@CountFiles:@DeepCountFiles files,
	@CountFolders:@DeepCountFolders folders
')
? o1.ShowXT()

Output:

📁 testarea (1:7 files, 5:7 folders)
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─🖿 images (2:4 files, 2:2 folders)
├─🗀 music
├─🖿 tempo (2:2 files)
╰─🗀 videos

The notation reveals the distinction between immediate and deep counts. The main folder contains 7 files across all levels, with only 1 at the root. Similarly, it has 7 subfolders total, with 5 at the root level.

Surgical Exploration: Targeted Expansion

Rather than overwhelming with full tree dumps, Softanza provides surgical precision:

o1.ExpandFolder("/images/")
? o1.ShowXT()

Output:

📁 testarea (1:7 files, 5:7 folders)
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─🗁 images (2:4 files, 2:2 folders)   # Only this folder expanded
│ ├─ 🗋 image1.png
│ ├─ 🗋 image2.png
│ ├─🗀 more
│ ╰─🖿 notes (2:2 files)               # It's subfolder are kept collapsed
├─🗀 music
├─🖿 tempo (2:2 files)
╰─🗀 videos

The expanded folder changes its icon to 🗁, indicating its current state. Only the images folder opens while others remain collapsed, and subfolders maintain their distinct visual indicators.

Multi-Target Expansion: Efficiency in Action

Expanding multiple folders simultaneously demonstrates the API's practical design:

o1.ExpandFolders([ "images", "tempo" ])
? o1.Show()

Output:

🗀 testarea
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─🗁 images         # Expanded
│ ├─ 🗋 image1.png
│ ├─ 🗋 image2.png
│ ├─🗀 more
│ ╰─🖿 notes
├─🗀 music
├─🗁 tempo          # Also expanded
│ ├─ 🗋 temp1.txt
│ ╰─ 🗋 temp2.txt
╰─🗀 videos

Stateful Intelligence: Persistent Exploration

A crucial aspect of developer experience—the library remembers your exploration state:

? o1.Show()
#--> Same output as the previous one

This stateful behavior preserves the exploration context across operations, eliminating the need to reconfigure display settings.

Nested Exploration: Deep Directory Diving

For complex hierarchies, we can expand nested paths precisely:

o1.Collapse()
o1.ExpandFolders([ "/images/", "/images/notes/" ])
? o1.Show()

Output:

🗀 testarea
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─🗁 images         # Expanded
│ ├─ 🗋 image1.png
│ ├─ 🗋 image2.png
│ ├─🗀 more
│ ╰─🗁 notes        # Also expanded
│   ├─ 🗋 howto.txt
│   ╰─ 🗋 sources.txt
├─🗀 music
├─🖿 tempo
╰─🗀 videos

Deep Expansion: Branch-Level Exploration

When you need to see everything within a specific branch:

o1.Collapse()
o1.DeepExpandFolder("Images")
? o1.Show()

Output:

🗀 testarea
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 Docs
├─🗁 Images            # Folder expanded
│ ├─ 🗋 image1.png
│ ├─ 🗋 image2.png
│ ├─🗁 more            # As well as this (empty) subfolder
│ ╰─🗁 notes           # Idem
│   ├─ 🗋 howto.txt
│   ╰─ 🗋 sources.txt
├─🗀 Music
├─🗀 Videos
╰─🖿 tempo

Complete Revelation: Full Tree Expansion

For comprehensive analysis, expand everything at once:

o1.DeepExpandAll()
? o1.ShowXT()

Output:

📁 testarea (1:7 files, 5:7 folders)
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗁 docs
├─🗁 images (2:4 files, 2:2 folders)
│ ├─ 🗋 image1.png
│ ├─ 🗋 image2.png
│ ├─🗁 more
│ ╰─🗁 notes (2:2 files)
│   ├─ 🗋 howto.txt
│   ╰─ 🗋 sources.txt
├─🗁 music
├─🗁 tempo (2:2 files)
│ ├─ 🗋 temp1.txt
│ ╰─ 🗋 temp2.txt
╰─🗁 videos

Visual Search: Finding Files with Context

Softanza extends beyond navigation to include visual search capabilities:

? o1.VizSearch("*.txt")

Output:

🗀 testarea (🎯 1 matches for '*.txt') # We've got 1 file at the root
├─ 🗋👉 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─📂 images  # May contain matches search covers only the root!
├─🗀 music
├─📂 tempo   # Idem, see next section for searching deep in the tree...
╰─🗀 videos

The search results maintain the tree structure while highlighting matches with the pointing finger icon (👉) and adding a target emoji (🎯) in the statistics.

Deep Search: Comprehensive File Discovery

For searches across the entire directory hierarchy we add Deep to the search method:

? o1.VizDeepSearch("*.txt")

Output:

🗀 testarea (🎯5 matches for '*.txt')
├─ 🗋👉 test.txt	
├─🗀 docs
├─📂 images (2)
│ ├─ 🗋 image1.png
│ ├─ 🗋 image2.png
│ ├─🗀 more
│ ╰─📂 notes (2)
│   ├─ 🗋👉 howto.txt
│   ╰─ 🗋👉 sources.txt
├─🗀 music
├─📂 tempo (2)
│ ├─ 🗋👉 temp1.txt
│ ╰─ 🗋👉 temp2.txt
╰─🗀 videos

The deep search reveals all matching files throughout the hierarchy, automatically expanding necessary folders and highlighting each match. The statistics update to show the total count across all levels.

Note: All VizSearch methods also work without the Viz prefix, in which case they return a simple list of paths. This behavior will be covered in a separate article.

Clean Reset: Back to Beginning

When exploration is complete, easily return to the initial state:

o1.CollapseAll()
? o1.ShowXT()

Output:

📁 testarea (1:7 files, 5:7 folders)
├─ 🗋 test.txt
├─🗀 docs
├─🖿 images (2:4 files, 2:2 folders)
├─🗀 music
├─🖿 tempo (2:2 files)
╰─🗀 videos

The Softanza Advantage

Softanza's approach to directory navigation stands apart from conventional file system tools:

Note: The stzFolder class also provides comprehensive file and folder management operations including add, append, delete, move, copy, and content search functionality, which will be covered in a separate article.

Summary

This examination of stzFolder demonstrates its approach to directory navigation through visual representation, flexible statistics, selective expansion controls, and persistent state management. The class provides built-in tree visualization with customizable display patterns, distinguishing it from standard file system APIs that require manual formatting and traversal logic.

Citer

Mansour Ayouni. « Softanza's stzFolder: A Journey Through Intelligent Directory Navigation ». Softanza narrations, 2025. https://mayouni.github.io/stzsite/fr/narrations/stzfolder-visual-exploration-and-search.html

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