Is there a way to hide file types?
 

Hi, I have a dual boot between vista and slack11. I am sharing My music with windows, and as such it puts hundreds of album artworks in the folder. It isn't seen in windows, but it sure is in konqueror. I know that I can filter the jpegs once, but once I close the window and go back to it they are back.

Is there a program or a way around this annoyance?

I don't think that is possible because linux does not uses file extensions like windows does.

Please someone correct if I am wrong

A better Q would how can I show filetypes in Winders (tm:))?

The fact that M$ allows you to hide them is actually a security flaw because it allows the .ext of malicious files to be hidden.

Be thankful you can't do this in Linux.

I agree with archtoad6. In every Windows I've used I've always turned that "feature" off.

Well, I don't want to see these files either in Windows. iTunes put all these files in the same directory then makes them hidden. I still want these files, just not see them lol. I'm really suprised that you can't save in the folder settings filter settings per folder.

You could try a .hidden file. I don't know about Slackware, but it works in Kubuntu.

You just create a text file named ".hidden" in the directory and list the file and directory names you don't want to see, one per line. This will make Konqueror treat those as hidden files. You could create this file automatically login with a simple script like this:

Maybe you could just put the files in a "hidden" folder.

I thought that, but then I don't think that itunes could then see it. Guess I'm just SOL

Oops, I just re-read the OP & it seems it's the entire file that's hidden, not just the extension. Apologies for the previous off problem post.

We are up against a different, more interesting problem here: Harmonizing the differences in the ways the 2 OS's mark hidden files.

I am sure everyone here doesn't need the following review, but it might be useful to others reading this later:
File hiding is done differently in the 2 OS's. M$ file systems have a "hidden" attribute, similar to *nix file systems permission bits. Unices, including Linux, treat any file name, including directories, that begins w/ '.' as hidden.

If the .hidden file trick would work when cross-platform browsing, that would be great, but in my test it didn't. On my girlfriend's W2k box I did: in her Documents and Settings directory. The code worked exactly as intended -- .hidden contains a list of all hidden files. Unfortunately, Konqueror did not honor its contents, but did honor the leading '.' in its name. Note, I was using the "smb://" kioslave in Konqueror to do this browsing. This technique doesn't work any better using smb2k, which displays the shares to Konqueror in a subdirectory of an "smb2k" directory in "~" ($home).

Finally, I decided to see if this is a Kubuntu thing & checked it on 2 Linux boxen: SimplyMEPIS 3.3.2, KDE 3.3.2 & SimplyMEPIS 6.0, KDE 3.5.3 -- it didn't work on either. (With apologies to those who know this, MEPIS 6.0 uses the K/ubuntu repositories, 3.3.2 does not.)

AdaHacker,

• Which Kubuntu?
• Which KDE?
• In all 4 cases above I think I did exactly what you suggested:
  Quote:

  You just create a text file named ".hidden" in the directory and list the file and directory names you don't want to see, one per line.

  Especially the "1/line" part. I did check the contents of the .hidden files, I did start new instances of Konqueror, I did not restart X or re-boot.
  
  
• Have you ever used this technique cross-platform?

davidguygc,

• How are you browsing the M$ file system from Linux?
• Which ver. of KDE/Konqueror are you using?

I have these files in a vfat partition mounted under /mnt/MyDoc the files are under "/mnt/MyDoc/My Music"

If this .hidden file idea works, will it work w/ regular expressions? All of these are jpegs, and there are too many to list individually, and I can only assume that a lot are being added/taken away whenever I change anything in my music library

I am using KDE 3.5.4

I know it works on Feisty and Edgy. It's what they use to hide the system directories under /.
Whichever ones shipped with Kubuntu Edgy and Feisty. ;) Feisty, at least, uses version 3.5.6.
No need to restart X. KDE should pick up the changes as soon as the file is saved. The only caveat is that each line has to be the exact file/directory name - even an extra space at the end will throw it off.
Nope. I've only ever seen this on Kubuntu. It could be that this feature was added by the Kubuntu team and isn't part of KDE proper. I don't know and Google failed me on that. I just thought I'd mention the possibility.

No, it doesn't. No regular expressions, no wildcards. Only exact file names. That's why I suggested building the file on login.

I don't know if I could make a program that could do that in Linux. I probably can for Windows, but I really haven't made any programs in C++ on Linux yet, so I am not familiar with the functions.

davidguygc, Why the mention of C++? Did I miss something? What's wrong w/ using command line tools, i.e. shell script, batch, .cmd? There is Linux code in post #6, & DOS/Win code in post 9. If the file is created automatically, who cares how big it is? I doubt it's going to fill a partition meant for music. In fact it's going to be a tiny fraction of the size of just the image files it lists, let alone the music files they accompany.

AdaHacker, What about Dapper, do you know one way or the other if this works in Dapper? SimplyMEPIS 6.0 uses the K/Ubuntu 6.06 LTS repositories, if this functionality was added after that, regardless of by whom, then that would explain why it doesn't work for me. OTOH, if it works in Dapper, that would indicate that Ubuntu added this and MEPIS didn't pick it up.

davidguygc, If .hidden works in KDE 3.5.6, but not 3.5.3, & you have 3.5.4, why not just try it & see what happens? The worst case is that we all learn something.

I only know C++, I don't know how to do anything with shell script other than single line commands, and my system has been down for a couple of days, so I've been unable to try anything out. That's one of the first things I'm gonna do as soon as I get it up and running

I know the reason Windows hides them.
It names them: AlbumArt_{C544350D-AF2A-4173-8948-9AB913E1957E}_Large.jpg
This code (enclosed in squiggly brackets.)means something special to windows and different files for different things have different codes. Windows hides (permanently. As in you can't unhide them, AFAIK) these files.

However, in *nix, these codes mean precisely naff all, and it treats them like an ordinary jpeg. Which is why it shows them but windows doesn't.

You could hide them in *nix by renaming them ".<original_filename>" but I'm not sure if the application that put them there will be able to use them as it intended.

I don't have a VM with Dapper handy, so I can't say for sure. However, the Kubuntu FAQ seems to say that the hidden system directories started with Edgy, which sounds right to me. So I'd guess the answer is no.

Yes, that is my exact problem in a nutshell. You can show them in Windows, you have to set an option to view hidden files/folders.

I'm thinking that there must be some sort of way to call konqueror from the command line to where it has already preloaded the filter. I would like to think that is the best approach, if it exists.

hacker supreme, thanks for the info. on M$.

AdaHacker, I'm still looking for some official documentation on this .hidden file. Google seems worthless, probably because they ignore the '.'. Did I not follow your link deep enough?


davidguygc, Maybe it's time to start playing w/ the CLI (Command Line Interface) ;).

If the .hidden file technique works in your ver. of KDE, there is no need to think "filter" or calling Konqueror from the command line. The .hidden file is the filter & Konqueror should be started normally.

Yes, that's the downfall of Google: it's impossible to search for a literal string (at least as far as I know).

I haven't found any official documentation on it either. In fact, pretty much all I've found is a page on the Ubuntu wiki with instructions to delete /.hidden to make the system directories visible again. The rest I had to figure out for myself. At this point, I think it's most likely an Ubuntu-specific thing, as I've not seen it come up with relation to any other distribution.

AdaHacker, Is this what you meant your link in post 17 to point to? I see no mention of .hidden .

Yes. The /.hidden file is the means by which those directories were hidden.