Multiple filters for ShellFolder object?

[FrancescoDiMuro]

2 hours ago, Nine said:

Edit : if you find a general RE solution, I would love to see it 

There is no general RE solution.

We are talking about filters, so every pattern must be build based on what has to be excluded or included, isn't it?

[Nine]

7 minutes ago, FrancescoDiMuro said:

We are talking about filters, so every pattern must be build based on what has to be excluded or included, isn't it?

I think it is doable to have a general RE.  There is only 2 wild cards ? and *.  I believe someone agile with RE could make a first pass to replace DOS filter into a RE pattern then use it in a StringRexExp like you did...But that someone is not me 

[Melba23]

Hi,

Thanks for the replies, but using a RegEx on all the returns is exactly what I am trying to avoid. As I explained to mikell earlier, if you look inside _RecFileListToArray you will see that the function changes the DOS wildcard inclusion/exclusion lists into SRE format within the following function:

Func __FLTAR_ListToMask(ByRef $sMask, $sList)
    ; Check for invalid characters within list
    If StringRegExp($sList, "\\|/|:|\<|\>|\|") Then Return 0
    ; Strip WS and insert | for ;
    $sList = StringReplace(StringStripWS(StringRegExpReplace($sList, "\s*;\s*", ";"), BitOR($STR_STRIPLEADING, $STR_STRIPTRAILING)), ";", "|")
    ; Convert to SRE pattern
    $sList = StringReplace(StringReplace(StringRegExpReplace($sList, "[][$^.{}()+\-]", "\\$0"), "?", "."), "*", ".*?")
    ; Add prefix and suffix
    $sMask = "(?i)^(" & $sList & ")\z"
    Return 1
EndFunc   ;==>__FLTAR_ListToMask

And then each returned element is checked to see if it should be listed with lines such as this one:

If $iReturn <> 2 And StringRegExp($sName, $sInclude_File_Mask) And Not StringRegExp($sName, $sExclude_File_Mask) Then

This works perfectly, but it means using AutoIt code to loop through each item and run more than one SRE on it to check if it a valid item - which is not fast! As I explained in the first post I am trying to bypass this bottleneck in execution speed and get Windows to do all the work for me. Hence my initial wish to have multiple include filters - the solution to which caused everyone (including me) so much amusement.

Now I am hoping there is some way to get Windows to exclude files when using .Filter on the item list - but I have found nothing when Googling and was hoping that someone here already had an answer. So many thanks for your efforts so far but they really do nothing more than my existing code in _RecFileListToArray - what I want is an internal Windows filter so that all I see is the already filtered list within .Items.

M23

[Nine]

@Melba23 and all. You may (must ?) want to take a look at this information.  It won't help you for the exclude but you gonna be surprised (at least I was very surprised)...

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jeremykuhne/2017/06/04/wildcards-in-windows/

I tested on command line and it truly works.  I will look into it using API....

Enjoy !