A Better Finder Select extends the Finder with criteria-based selections and functions as the selection gateway to our rename and file modification tools.

The simplest selection method is through partial file name matches, e.g. "select all files which end in '.gif'", or "select all files which contain the word 'web'".

Unix-style wildcard matches such as "image*.gif" provide a more powerful alternative, but it is the regular expression matching, familiar to BBEdit , grep or Perl users that provide the ultimate file selection mechanism.

The matching files can be directly selected in the Finder or can be forwarded to our other tools:

• A Better Finder Rename for batch renaming
• A Better Finder Attributes for date or flag modifications
• etc.

The animation above demonstrates how to use the tool:

select all the files in a folder control-click inside a selected file icon choose "A Better Finder Select..." from the context menu enter a wildcard or a regular expression and press the "OK" button.

A Better Finder Select filters the selection based on your criteria and leaves only the matching files selected.

If you prefer you can also launch A Better Finder Select by pressing its Finder Hot Key: Command-Control-S

A Better Finder Select also allows file lists to be saved for future reference.

This product is no longer under ongoing development.

Version 3.7.1

19th April 2006

The new version updates the System Preferences Pane and the Hot Key Component to address a minor installation bug.

Regular Expressions

Check out the format of the regular expressions that you can use to formulate queries in A Better Finder Select.

Note that this is for power users, such as programmers. Most people will be better of with the easier options such as wildcards.