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Windows XP nerds - file metadata?

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 3:57 pm
by 4days
i badly miss version control on God's own operating system (VMS) - every time you saved and exited a file, it created a new file with the same name but appended a version number, e.g. 'myfile.txt;1' became 'myfile.txt;2'. you could set version control against a file mask (e.g. so it never kept more than 2 versions of a movie file). you could also store metadata about the file (such as comments, author, keywords) and then search for that metadata if you ever couldn't find the file - or use the metadata to compile reports/documentation.

it'd be nice to have even a fraction of that functionality on windows.

noticed you can add metadata to files in windows - is that metadata searchable? is it retrievable (e.g. can it be saved out to a textfile)?, can it be written to/amended from a dos prompt - so if i wrote a batch script to copy a file, could i query/update the metadata at the same time?

googling atm, but not having much luck.

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 4:57 pm
by Tormentius
If the files are indexed you should probably be able to use the Windows search to find files by info. AFAIK there is no way to edit metadata via the command prompt.

Posted: Sun Jun 11, 2006 6:47 pm
by dzjepp
google desktop search searches metadata iirc, if that's what you need