During long file operations, it would be a great feature to have the program automatically proceed with a copy or move job without waiting for the user's input... that way if you start a job that takes hours, and you walk away, you don't have to click a button when you come back the next day for the rest of the job to proceed...
Windows Vista seems to do something along this lines by grouping conflicts together at the end of a copy job, and then it asks the user about it at the end. (Amazingly, Microsoft finally gives you the option to apply the response to ALL the files too... explorer is almost usable in many regards now).
[quote="Supacon"]grouping conflicts together at the end[/quote]Grouping conflicts together at the start or end of a long job certainly sounds convenient to me too. For grouping at the end, this is like a 'Defer Decision'/'Defer All Decisions' button, with the option of turning it on by default.
(Perhaps the option of grouping them at the start might also be useful, if you want to be certain that it will be finished when you get back: in this case, though, every operation would presumably have to be checked first.)
If you know that you want all Source files to overwrite all Destination files, use this command:
Copy WHENEXISTS=replace FORCE
[quote="GPSoftware"]Copy - Raw Command
FORCE/S: The option allows you to suppress prompts and automatically replace existing files.
WHENEXISTS/O: Use this parameter to specify what happens when files you are copying already exist in the destination. This parameter overrides the options set in Preferences. You can choose to ask (ask what to do for each existing file), skip (skip all existing files) or replace (replace all existing files). You can also choose rename which will automatically rename any new files that already exist. Finally when copying FTP files, you can also specify resume to automatically resume the transfer of any existing files.[/quote]
I do know that you both of the options above for a truly unattended file copy.
FORCE – Personally, I believe the help file is not completely accurate on what this option does. From what I can tell it suppresses requests to overwrite program files, system and hidden files, and read only files.
WHENEXISTS=replace – will force the Source files to overwrite the Destination ones.
Alternatively you can use WHENEXISTS=rename, which will append a number to the end of any Source File as it is copied into the Destination (leaving the Destination file untouched). This creates a little more work for you later, but it also ensures you do not lose anything. You could always search or filter for files with a number suffix.
In many cases it wouldn't be as user friendly as simply being able to defer the decisions at the end, or make them right at the beginning (which I think would be harder to implement, and would still require some waiting).