I'm trying to make a button that will select by a pattern filter, that will look in all the folders starting with the current one. Not just filter by the current parent folder. Drill down in all the folders.
I think the PATH argument makes it possible but I have no idea how.
I tried just doing the star wildcard but that didn't work.
Select FILTERDEF Tags match BUS PATH=*
Trying to match the tag BUS, to select all files with that tag on it, in all the folders. ?
Use Find instead of Select.
Ya I do like that solution. But not that it creates a new File Collection folder to show the result.
I'm trying to make my own filter bar for tags. Each entry in my menu will select according to that tag/s and hide everything else. I can click the menu-button to show everything, to clear the filter, same as the filter bar.
So I'm also making a tag filter menu that drills into the sub folders too. But ideally this would be a Ctrl + click on the standard tag filter menu entries. (Single click = this folder. Ctrl + click = this folder and all subfolders)
Leo is right.
The best thing to do is use Find.
Tag modifications work from the Find Collection too at least as I have experienced this.
Drilling down for this kind of thing in Folder Flatview is probably not a good way to do this.
I tried to do one on a drive letter and it froze up.
But you can use expanded folders to do this tag select.
Expand the folders you want considered in the selection and then do the Select By Tag.
You're syntax is almost right, but incorrect.
Select Filterdef tags match BUS
But personally I prefer the Advanced Select GUI, but that's just me.
But in the end, I think Leo has the best solution here.
Use Find and make a find collection ! It is a user friendly solution.
The best thing is to have a metadata filter bar (with a toggle button for parent / +children(drill); for all three filters). There are three major filter types: name&path, filetype, and metadata. The filter bar is missing 1/3rd of it's functionality, with a show everything box squatting in its rightful place.
I added the PATH=* to try and drill down into folders. I'm still wondering if the $ operator is what I'm looking for. Or matchsubfolder (*) Or if using predefined filters would work instead of filterdef. There has to be some basic argument for this, in a program specifically designed to organize directories.
You're right that choosing what folders you want included might come in handy. Expanding first is a good idea but I bet this would work with checkbox mode instead of expanding. The problem with expanding is when you expand your first choice the following folders are pushed down so you have to scroll to get to them. With really large libraries this becomes a no go.
OK,
It's getting late here, I'll sleep on it and get back to you tomorrow.
sleep tight 
The find panel is good. That's all I would always use, in its minimized mode. I would just choose a preset and click find. Buuuut of course I can't cause there's no find button. Because it's there for aesthetics. That's a fine filter bar you got there.
Looks good. Too bad I can't FIND anything using the frikkin FIND PANEL cause there's no FIND BUTTON. Of course we need a Reset menu on speed dial on the find panel but no way to actually find anything. We got Show Everything text always there even when there's NOTHING HIDDEN and a find panel with no FIND BUTTON!
Scrolling down should bring your Find button out of hiding.
Here is how to set up a button that uses Find to find files with a tag.
This does recurse down through subfolders and the subfolders do not have to be made visible using expanded folders or flatview. And if is a big search, you get a nice pop-up window informing you of the search progress.
Find HERE CLEAR RECURSE FILTERDEF tags match BUS
The Find results are displayed in a file collection, Find Results, by default. You can also specify the name of the file collection you want the results in using COLLNAME.
The CLEAR argument clears the previous find results. Setting CLEAR=no keeps the previous search results.
If you set Recurse to RECURSE=no , subfolders will be excluded from the find.
That's excellent, thank you.
Recurse is the magic thing I was looking for.
That's the thing. I'm not doing that.
Long ago they realized it's better for a quick filter than having to write out an essay to filter something. So they made a filter bar. I'm expanding on that, making an array of filtering methods using buttons. If they had the Find Presets and a Find button available I would use that instead. But when I get all these buttons done it should be fine.
So this code is working. I'm crossing the results over to the other lister so when I'm done I can just close the tab and be back where I was before. Clearing the filter is one of the benefits of hiding things instead of finding them. Less clicks the better.
Find HERE CLEAR RECURSE SHOWRESULTS=dest,newtab COLLNAME="Tags BUS - Drilled" FILTERDEF tags match BUSI'm having multiple issues with file collections, so I will be back to bug you later. Thanks again. 
The expand branch then hide idea is growing on me. I like not having a search result folder be created in my file collections, and that it isn't temporary.
Can't decide between using flat view or expand folders. They seem to result in the same thing. I wish that I didn't see it happening though. Is there any command that tells the graphics card to pause until all the button commands are processed?
What would be killer is events for buttons, especially menus. Modifier held down or different mouse click would run a different command line. I would have a list of things in a menu, say my priorities.
Left click on a priority would filter by it.
Right click would do the same but drill in all subfolders.
Ctrl left click filter but open in new destination tab.
Ctrl right click filter + drill open in new destination tab.
MM button on the menu button would clear anything hidden (reset filter).
Events on columns would be sweet too. Make a selection, then Ctrl click on a column.
It would hide everything that doesn't match that column data within the selected things. Cherry. 
Maybe I should do a request for this.
Sorry I misunderstood that.
I'm very glad that together we could get something that at least in part works.
Please be careful of your slang. This forum is truly international. 
Wait a second I had an idea...
Can Dopus save and recall variables?
As in:
Selection = store tag values in ga, gb, gc
Then later (a different selection of files)
Selection = if ga==AD1 then ga==AD2, if gb>= attr: eval "Priority" then gb==A2, if gc==2024 then gc==2025.
Yes, but I think a database is better suited for this.
I used MySQL databases with PHP many years ago, but that doesn't help with Dopus.
Maybe someone else can answer this better than I can.
Ok, well the benefits are there. I could see a lot of applications to this.
Variables saving data that can be recalled by other processes at any time enables so many things. It would allow for the auto writing of anything you want, for one example.
And you can do time sensitive data. For example a priority could increase itself over time when it's reaching a deadline etc.
I just found the Set QUICKFILTER argument. Learned that you can use the evaluator with the quickfilter, but I'm not yet able to write an argument that works for tags or other metadata. Can that be done?
