vesterberg.se

Every once in a while I do a quick research for useful utility programs (small helpful programs) that will save me some time. For many of them there is a free version, but it is worth a few dollars to have the registered version. Besides, let’s support those who make useful programs! I have been moving all my programs to a new laptop this week and these are the development utilities that follow me from computer to computer:

Winzip
Winzip is an eternal classic. It compresses and decompresses all kinds of files and directories. Even though XP gives you the content of a zip-file, I usually disable this feature because XP will expand zip-files unnecessary often. You disable by issuing: “regsvr32 /u zipfldr.dll”. When you open a directory in Windows Explorer you do not want Windows to look into every zip-file until you ask for it. I have WinRAR, but the latest version of winzip handles .rar files also.

ExamDiffPro
ExamDiffPro can compare files and, what is more interesting; it can compare directories recursively and give you a good visual overview what differs. This is very useful when comparing Java source trees or class files for example. It is very configurable and fast. You can for example filter out cvs- and svn- (version control) directories. You can configure it to ignore white-space (blank, tab etc) when comparing lines.

Search&Replace
Search&Replace is a combination of the Unix grep and find programs. You can search and replace in directories and zip-files recursively. You can even script your searches. Regular expressions can be used for file content as well as for file matching and you can configure the search to ignore whitespace. I know that Windows XP has its own search utility, but this program is much more reliable and versatile.

Hotfolders
Hotfolders is extremely useful. Many times when you do “Save As…” or “Open” you have to move across directory hierarchies up and down. Something that is tiresome indeed. With Hotfolders you get an extra small button in the title bar of the dialogue that opens up a small window with favorite folders. There is also a list of recently visited folders and files. When you click on a file or folder in this window, the directory list in the dialogue-window is expanded accordingly. Ingenious! It saves a lot of time.

CmdHere
With CmdHere, a “Power Toy” from Microsoft, You can open a command shell (dos window) by right-clicking on a directory in windows explorer. In reality it means changing two values in the registry. Using CmdHere is much faster than opening a command shell and successively changes directories.

RegexBuddy
RegexBuddy helps you to construct a regular expression visually. You can test and debug it. You can even choose a programming language and RegexBuddy will generate the necessary code for you. A great tool to verify that an expression really covers what you think it does.

BareTailPro
BareTailPro works like tail in Unix with a graphical front end. It will follow a log file and display the content continuously. But not only that, it has regular expression capabilities, which means that it can sort out and display only a subset of the lines in a file. It is fast. I often work with very large log files and it used to be so tedious to find ERROR lines in a 30Mb file full of DEBUG printout.