Re: clean numbered backups with convert-ly

[David Kastrup]

Eluze <address@hidden> writes:

> carried away by my success in contributing a little patch for convert-ly in
> Python and inspired by dak's sentence "numbered backups tend to accumulate"
> (sorry I can't remember exactly where that was) I tried a new patch to get
> rid of these numerous backups:
>
> -k --clean-numbered-backup - "clean numbered backups
> [filename.ext.~number~]"
>
> surely it's also not difficult to find these backups with an explorer and an
> appropriate regex and to delete them manually.
>
> for me it was an occasion to learn more about Python and regex. and tbh it
> took me much more time than the result would let you think.
>
> if somebody feels this is usable or useful please add it to convert-ly.

As you said: this is easy to do with shell patterns anyway.  Easier to
look up a rarely used option, and more flexible (you can do it for one
or multiple files).  So I'd lean towards not doing anything here.

> another (not really related) topic:
>
> during the discussion about numbered backups I discovered that you can
> easily write "convert-ly -beck" whereas I used to write  -b -e -c -k   - I
> don't think I've seen this is mentioned in the AU but it is much easier to
> write!

convert -ed is frequently mentioned on the list.

> so I suggest to add a short note like:
>
> boolean parameters like e, c, d, b … can be collected after a single "-",
> eg. -bec

It's usually not just booleans, though some utilities differ how they
accumulate options with parameters.  So sometimes you can write

-xyz paramx paramy paramz

but sometimes the interpretation instead leads to

-xparamx -yparamy -zparamz

> in the end of the chapter *2.3 Command line options for convert-ly*

This is usually assumed to be common knowledge, but of course it's
"common knowledge" mostly with people accustomed to Unix.

-- 
David Kastrup