Alright, let me walk you through what I did with this whole “tyler mark” thing I’ve been tinkering with. It wasn’t anything too fancy, just something I needed for my own workflow.
So, I found myself needing a really simple way to flag certain files in my project folders. Like, stuff I’d already looked over or processed. I didn’t want to rename them or move them around, that always messes things up later. Just needed a quick visual cue for myself.
Getting Started
First thing, I thought about how to actually make this mark. Could I add something inside the file? Nah, too risky, might break things depending on the file type. A separate log file? Seemed like overkill and easy to lose track of. Then it hit me – why not just create a tiny, empty companion file right next to the original? Like, if I have `important_*`, I’d just create a little empty file called `.important_*`. The dot at the beginning keeps it hidden usually, which is nice.
Figuring Out the Steps
I decided to try this out using simple commands first. Opened up my command line tool, you know, the terminal.
- I picked a test file, say `*`.
- I tried the command `touch .*`. That command just creates an empty file if it doesn’t exist.
- Checked the folder, and yep, the hidden marker file was there! Cool.
Making it Practical
Okay, doing it one by one is silly. I needed to do it for a whole bunch of files at once. So, I figured I’d write a tiny script, just a few lines of commands.
I put together a little loop. Something that would look at all the files I cared about (say, all `.data` files) in the current folder and create that hidden `.tylermark` file for each one. It looked a bit like `for item in .data; do touch “.$*”; done`. I ran this in a test folder filled with dummy files.
It worked like a charm! All my `.data` files got their own hidden marker file instantly. Perfect.
Then I thought, what if I need to remove the marks? Needed a way to undo it. So, I wrote another little loop, this one specifically looked for all files ending in `.tylermark` and removed them. Something like `rm ..tylermark`. Tested that too. Also worked.
The Result
So now I have these two super simple commands, basically. One to add the ‘tyler mark’ to all my target files in a folder, and one to remove them all. It’s crude, I know. No fancy database or anything. But it’s fast, doesn’t mess with the original files, and I can quickly see what’s marked just by listing all files (including hidden ones). For my day-to-day quick checks, this ‘tyler mark’ system does exactly what I need it to. Been using it for a bit now, quite handy.
