Sorry, this is just a fragment.

( Need to write something here about why Ftwalk never connected as a language or project. Then some lame excuses why I think it's still worth pursuing. )

Directions

I think there are three useful directions that we can move in:

• Minimalist Ftwalk: a library and wrapper program (find replacement) that implements Ftwalk's file tree search expressions. The library should be easy to hook into the command line options of any program that does file tree searches and would like to have greater selectivity (e.g., tar, rsync.
• FtBackup: implement a program which specifically addresses Ftwalk's original raison d'être: to perform automated backup of a select subset of files by synchronized mirroring.

Minimalist Ftwalk

Minimalist Ftwalk is library which implements a small subset of Ftwalk, specifically the file tree search expressions that are functionally equivalent to the awkward expressions of find(1).

The main function of the library would take a script (a string or pathname to a file containing a script) and a file tree search list, compile the script, and search the file tree(s), evaluating each file against the compiled script

FtBackup

FtBackup (not necessarily the name) would be a program written for the single and explicit purpose of performing efficient, automated backups by synchronized mirroring.

Hawk