Topic       : Documentation for Thing
Author      : Arno Welzel/Thomas Binder/TransAction
Version     : thing.hyp 1.27E (23/8/1998)
Subject     : Documentation/Shells
Nodes       : 269
Index Size  : 6336
HCP-Version : 4
Compiled on : Atari
@charset    : atarist
@lang       : 
@default    : %I
@help       : %Hilfe
@options    : +g -i -s +y +zz -t4 -d10
@width      : 75
@hostname   : THING   
View Ref-FileDisplay - Mask...                                                     Thing

A selection file mask can be entered which determines what is to be 
displayed in the active directory window. If no directory window is active 
this option is greyed out and cannot be selected.

The dialog offers keyboard shortcuts and even features its own auto-locator 
action! A list of all possible file extenders in the active directory are 
listed as masks. Files can be Drag&Dropped onto the input field and Thing 
will try to evaluate the filename to generate a mask.

Thing accepts the wildcards familiar from Unix shells: '*', '?' as well 
as '[...]':

'*':     None or any number of characters
'?':     Any one character
'[...]': One character from a selection or region. So '[ABC]' represents 
         either 'A', 'B' or 'C'. Another variant is '[A-F]', which 
         represents a short form of '[ABCDEF]'.

Warning: '*.*' does not mean all files, as familiar from GEMDOS, but 
all files that have at least one dot in the filename! Thus a file called 
'README' would not be covered by this mask. If all the files are to be 
displayed then the mask must read '*'. This will be the assumed default 
if the input field is left empty.

Thing pays no attention to case for masking, i.e. '*.lzh' is identical to 
'*.LZH' and will also find e.g. 'blabla.LzH'.

Multiple masks can be entered using a comma ',' without additional space 
characters as a separator. For example '*.PRG,*.APP' displays all programs 
with either the PRG or APP file extender.

Thing 1.20 onwards now also suports exclusion masks; for this one just has 
to add a tilde character '~' before the relevant mask. Thus, for instance, 
'~*.txt' represents all files that do not end with '.txt'.

Multiple masks can be selected using the mouse. Select the first mask 
normally then hold down the  Shift  key and select the other entries.