Why not "wma"?

[brucep]

I noted that the default spacehogs list contains *.mp3. I consider this a good thing to put music files into the spacehogs area because they are mostly read-only and speed is not a requirement... is there a reason that the *.wma files are not in that list too since they are also music files?

For now, I will add *.wma using the -u option

[brucep]

I just thought of this, while we are discussing the spacehogs list.

There are some files generated/used for JAVA programming called *.jar and *.ear and *.war which may be candidates for the spacehog area.

[jeroen]

is there a reason that the *.wma files are not in that list too since they are also music files?

JkDefrag needs a fair amount of time to compare all the files on a disk with all the SpaceHogs masks ("Applying Exclude and SpaceHogs masks...."). To keep the time within reasonable limits I have to keep the list small and cannot add all possible audio file formats. Only the more popular. If I enter mp3 into Google I get 289.000.000 hits, for wma only 3.640.000. On my computer I have 12510 mp3 files and 144 wma files. I'm sorry, but wma is simply not popular enough. If there are many votes on this forum for adding wma then I will be happy to add it, but you are the first to ask.

[jeroen]

There are some files generated/used for JAVA programming called *.jar and *.ear and *.war which may be candidates for the spacehog area.

Same arguments as above. And I've actually never even heard of *.ear and *.war....

[brucep]

There are some files generated/used for JAVA programming called *.jar and *.ear and *.war which may be candidates for the spacehog area.

Same arguments as above. And I've actually never even heard of *.ear and *.war....

Thanks for explaining. As a software developer, I understand you have to draw the line somwhere.

BTW: The .ear (Enterprise ARchive) and .war (Web Archive) files are generated when deploying EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) using the J2EE specification. One example of an EJB-enabled applicaiton would be "eBay". You can perhaps imagine how large the deployable file is for an application such as eBay. (with EJBs, all the .jar files are essentually zipped into a huge .ear file to be deployed on the server matrix as a single entity.)

[jeroen]

BTW: The .ear (Enterprise ARchive) and .war (Web Archive) files are generated when deploying EJB (Enterprise Java Beans) using the J2EE specification.

Thanks for the explanation. So it's essentially an executable? Then I don't think it should be classified as a SpaceHog, but as a regular file just like other executables.

[trev]

was looking for a place to suggest new spacehog extensions, thought this thread was as close as i will get.

also on audio, what about .flac? since it is quite a bit bigger than any of the lossy audio codecs being lossless, the files are usually quite large, on average about half of the equivalent wave file. and speaking of wave files, what about .wav?

I understand if it's a no, -u option is fine, just thought wave and flac might be popular enough now to warrant it.

[jeroen]

Thanks for your suggestion, I appreciate it! I will add .wav, but I don't think .flac is very popular. The vast majority of audio files is .mp3, followed at a distance by .wav, but I don't see many .flac downloads on the internet.

[Lothsahn]

I would argue against including .wav.  Small wav files, used frequently by windows or files should be fast to access.  Wav files that people are using for music or video editing or some purpose are going to be huge, as wav files grow in size quickly.  Therefore, they'll be covered by the following requirement:
Files bigger than 50 megabytes

Therefore, I think the current scheme is fine for .wav files.

[The Seeker]

I think not adding flac may be a mistake. If you take a look at the users on Hydrogenaudio for instance, you'll see that most users who store their music as lossless archives use flac. Also, the vast majority of trading sites (for bootlegs etc) use flac too.

I write this as a fellow flac user. I do keep mp3s on my C: drive, but all my flac files are on my external HDD, which I defrag every week along with my laptop.

[Lothsahn]

is there a reason that the *.wma files are not in that list too since they are also music files?

JkDefrag needs a fair amount of time to compare all the files on a disk with all the SpaceHogs masks ("Applying Exclude and SpaceHogs masks...."). To keep the time within reasonable limits I have to keep the list small and cannot add all possible audio file formats. Only the more popular. If I enter mp3 into Google I get 289.000.000 hits, for wma only 3.640.000. On my computer I have 12510 mp3 files and 144 wma files. I'm sorry, but wma is simply not popular enough. If there are many votes on this forum for adding wma then I will be happy to add it, but you are the first to ask.

Jeroen:
If I optimized the routine for spacehogs, would you be willing to add a lot of file formats?  Is it just a performance issue?

The performance of determining which files are spacehogs should be O(n), where n is the number of files.  Putting the files into a HashSet and doing a lookup based on the extension should be an O(1) operation.

I'm not sure how you're currently doing it, but if this is the concern, I'll whip up a solution for you that runs much faster (it is, after all, open source).  It seems odd with modern processors that we're concerned about keeping the number of file extensions that we support to a minimum.

Is this something you'd like?

I agree with other people that wmv and wma should be considered spacehogs.

Lothsahn

[jeroen]

If I optimized the routine for spacehogs, would you be willing to add a lot of file formats?  Is it just a performance issue?

Thank you very much for your kind offer, I appreciate it. But at the moment I am not looking for contributions. Version 3 is more or less frozen and I will only release a new version if I find a serious bug. I'm working on version 4 now, nearing completion but not released yet, so I'm not looking for contributions there either, at the moment.

Speed is the main reason for keeping the SpaceHogs list small. Another reason is that I cannot please everyone. As you can see in this thread there are arguments pro and con for wav files, the same goes for other extensions. The current list selects about half the files on my system disk for the spacehogs, and I feel that is a good balance.

[jeroen]

I think not adding flac may be a mistake.

Please note that you can add your own extensions with the JkDefrag "-u" option.

[The Seeker]

Please note that you can add your own extensions with the JkDefrag "-u" option.

Cool, I'll do that. If you do decide to add flac, could you let us know? Thanks

[camelx]

I agree with The Seeker about FLAC being very popular now. I've used it for years and all serious audio/computer people are using it. All the computer audio servers support it also.

That said, I'd vote not to have it added to spacehogs. I have hundreds of thousands of flac files on my "audio" drive and I want my music to be sorted by my artists directories, within them album directories and then all the titles which are the actually FLAC files. I think most who are using FLAC will have a dedicated drive for them and wants to make sure they are together.

This drive I use the -u "DisableDefaults". I do NOT want my files to be separated, esp since I am playing albums when that directory is selected.