Is this the way you'd handle pasting template files with Keyboard Maestro?
On a side note I'm setting up my new mac and building all my macros and actions from scratch. It took me a while to figure out why this macro wasn't working when I was first set it up. The file is on an external drive and Keyboard Maestro needed full disk access. My mac was Dinging at me every time I tried the Macro and Keyboard Maestro never requested full disk access. I had to manually add it. Is that a bug?
If it works, it works!
Though, personally, I'd use the "Move a File" action with the option set to "Copy". This, for example, will create a copy of your template in the current Finder "insertion location" (generally the target of the front Finder window, but take care if you're a fan of list view...):
There's usually more than one way to do things in KM, and it'll come down to workflow and personal preference which you use at any time.
Nerd note: You should really avoid ~ and ! in your file/folder names. Finder and most Mac apps handle them just fine, but you're causing problems for yourself if you start using command line tools such as ffmpeg to process your videos.
Thank you that does look like a better way to do it.
And as to the ~ and ! in filenames yeah that is not ideal. I tend to add special characters to my top level folders to order them in the way I want. Those particular characters would cause conflicts though.
Off topic a bit but do you know of a good resource to quickly see character hierarchy? I know I could just number my folders but I usually reserve that for when I'm trying to specifically tell myself the order is important for some other purpose.
"It depends...".
Finder uses the Unicode Collation Algorithm (link fixed -- thanks, @kevinb!), but exact sort order can vary by locale. There's also clever things like treating numbers as numbers not characters, so 9 - My Folder comes before 10 - My Folder, which it doesn't under a normal ASCII sort.
You could try to make sense of the Collation Charts... But KM's "sort" uses the same collation as Finder except without the "treat numbers as numbers" (I got this very wrong earlier -- see how 10 sorts before 3 in the screen shot below) so the easiest way would be to list everything you want to check, one item per line, pass it through a "Filter: Sort Lines" action, and "Display" the result:
Rule of thumb is "whitespace, punctuation, emoji, numbers, case-insensitive letters", in that order -- but generating your own chart will let you see how those larger groupings are sub-sorted.
Thank you so much I'll look into this
Looks like @Nige_S has addressed your question, but if you are looking for that and maybe some other Finder automation, you might find this macro set interesting: Finder Assistant
With that set of macros, if you have the Finder open, have a folder open or selected, and invoke Finder Assistant, you'll see a Prompt With List menu appear. For example, when I have the ~/Downloads folder open, the following appears:
If the Write New File/Folder... option is selected, then this monster dialog appears:
Yes, the dialog is a bit ugly, but it does enable several handy new file/folder features. For example, if the Templates folder includes a template folder with one or more items within (folders and/or files), then the parent folder and child items can be easily cloned. More often, however, I use the Write New File/Folder... to clone one file or to create an empty file or folder.
I think perhaps the wrong link got in there (it is the same as for the charts). Perhaps it should have been to: UTS #10: Unicode Collation Algorithm, which tells us that:
“Collation is the general term for the process and function of determining the sorting order of strings of characters.”
Thanks @kevinb -- fixed now.
Too many edits while writing, not enough checking before posting...
I have every sympathy there!
