I used the function "Select similar files" and "Select next similar files" to find out what it does.
I found so far that it only looks at the contents of the sorted column - but then I found that the selection always only expanded to the files that have the same content in the sorted field.
E.g. if I sort by the column that shows the contents of ARTIST, then Shift-Ctrl-G selects Anthony Rother
but not the immediately adjacent Anthony Rothers
(which I would consider to be similar but not the same)
Further testing with the column that shows TRACK with this data
02/24
02/22
2/8
2/30
02
02/35
selected only each line separately but not all files with track no. 2 (regardless of any padding or totals). For me the value 2 was similar enough.
I describe a use case for which I would find it rather useful to select files with similar or equal contents:
Take it that there is a playlist with a selection of great hits but for some reason, some tracks are too slow. So all the tracks with less BPM than 119 should be removed.
The playlist defines a certain order. If now have to sort the loaded files by BPM, that order would be destroyed.
So it would be nicer to get all "similar" files selected at their current position without the need to sort.
(And a way to define the similarity would also be nice. The criterion "less than 119 BPM" is currently apparently not implemented.)
The function Select similar files selects all files that have the same content with respect to the currently active sort criteria. I originally designed this function to work on the same album only, but noticed that it can be expanded to also support other fields.
Since the files most likely differ in other metadata properties (and in the actual media data), they are only similar, not identical.
Therefore, Select same files would be incorrect, Select files with same content in sort criteria is too long, and Select same <sort field name> is difficult or impossible to generate correctly in some languages.
The current status bar help text is a little bit more descriptive:
Select files similar to the currently selected file based on the active sort criteria.
As usual, I'll update the official documentation with the stable release.
Regarding your playlist example: I'd just use the filter with BPM LESS 119 and delete the results.
I would not take the sort field name but the column header / column name. Like that it would be clear by which column contents the files get selected now.
And another idea about the sorting: what about taking the result of the "sort by" property to select files. If an appropriate function is set (e.g. $num(%track%,2) for the column showing TRACK), then all the "2s" from the above example would be selected.
The same would apply to artists who could not make up their minds about e.g. the "The" in their name and which some users may delete to get "The Beatles" and "Beatles" together.
Good point, and I was thinking about that as well. Could you suggest a concrete wording, maybe also with a German translation, of the menu item text you have in mind?
As an additional note that might not be immediately obvious: I wrote active sort criteria (plural), not criterion, which means that sorting by multiple columns is also supported.
Good point as well about using Sort by (and using Value as fallback).
Select similar files (from Track, Album, Album Artist)
Select next similar files (from Track, Album, Album Artist)
Ähnliche Dateien auswählen (aus Track, Album, Album-Interpret)
Nächste ähnliche Dateien auswählen (aus Track, Album, Album-Interpret)
I don't like the very long menu item names, but I do like how it's directly obvious what's used for similarity. However, the latter might already be known when using the feature.
The little arrow to indicate the last sort criterion is only visible on the last column - so I would assume that a reference to this column would be enough.
A footnote: the function View>Sort by also shows only the last criterion.
If Value is used as fallback, the checkbox Numeric should also be used. Currently it seems to be ignored. I observed this with one album having leading zeros in track numbers and others that don't.
If I first sort the album artist and then the track number and then select similar files, only those before or after the one with leading zeros are selected.
