Files-from flag should accept remotes

[mohhas]

@ncw

Feature-request:

The "files-from" flag only accepts a file. It would be nice if it accepted a remote and used its contents as a criterion for the operation.

Lets say I am doing a copy operation from FolderA to FolderB. But I want to copy only those files that exist in FolderC. Currently the way it's done is, first I save the filelist of FolderC to a text file. Then I run the command:

rclone copy FolderA FolderB --files-from filelist.txt

If instead the --files-from flag could accept FolderC as a parameter, it would save the user from having to first create a text file with the list of FolderC contents.

Another use-case is if I am doing a cleanup of my Onedrive and would like to delete only the files that exist locally on my drive.

rclone delete Onedrive:pictures\plants --files-from d:\pictures\plants

Hope it makes sense and is considered to be incorporated in the upcoming versions of Rclone. Perhaps, it'd be nice if 'include-from' and 'exclude-from' too received this feature.

Thanks in advance.

[jwink3101 (Justin Winokur)]

There is an XY problem here (though thankfully you spell out X):

@mohhas

But I want to copy only those files that exist in FolderC

Take a look at --compare-dest and/or --copy-dest. If (and that is an "if") I understand your problem, this may help.

Otherwise, I think this falls into the area of scripting like you're doing being the best option. You could quickly bloat the tool trying to do everything and inevitably break some workflow