8.3: The File List Browser

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The file list browser is in fact a general-purpose tool for browsing the file system (as well as FTP servers) from Pharo. You can open it from the World > Tools... > File Browser menu. What you see of course depends on the contents of your local file system, but a typical view is shown in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\).

When you first open a file list browser it will be focused on the current directory, that is, the one from which you started Pharo. The title bar shows the directory name. The larger pane on the left-hand side can be used to navigate the file system in the conventional way. When a directory is selected, the files that it contains (but not the directories) are displayed on the right. This list of files can be filtered by entering a Unix-style pattern in the small box at the top-left of the window. Initially, this pattern is *, which matches all file names, but you can type a different string there and accept it, changing the pattern. (Note that a * is implicitly prepended and appended to the pattern that you type.) The sort order of the files can be changed using the name, date and size buttons. The rest of the buttons depend on the name of the file selected in the browser. In Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\), the file name has the suffix .st, so the browser assumes that it is pharo code, and provides the possible actions as buttons.

Because the choice of buttons to display depends on the file’s name, and not on its contents, sometimes the button that you want won’t be on the screen.

However, the full set of options is always available from the right-click more... menu, so you can easily work around this problem.

The code button is perhaps the most useful for working with change sets; it opens a browser on the contents of the change set file or even an MC package; an example is shown in Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\). The file contents browser is similar to the browser except that the code is not loaded in memory.

A File Contents Browser. — Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\): A File Contents Browser opened on a package.