FSeq is a C library for working with sequences of files. File sequences are commonly used in the VFX and film industry to represent individual frames of an animation or film. For example the files:
- render.0001.exr
- render.0002.exr
- render.0003.exr
- render.0004.exr
- render.0005.exr
Can be represented by the file sequence shorthand:
- render.0001-0005.exr
This makes browsing much easier when you have hundreds or thousands of files in a directory.
FSeq compiles on Linux, OS X, and Windows. A CMakeLists.txt is provided for building the library, but the code can also be copied directly into another source tree for use (it consists of a single header and source file, fseq.h and fseq.c).
FSeq is open source software distributed under a BSD style license. See the file LICENSE.txt for details.
Example splitting a file name into a path, base name, number, and extension:
#include <fseq/fseq.h>
...
struct FSeqFileName fileName;
fseqFileNameInit(&fileName);
fseqFileNameSplit("/tmp/render0100.exr", &fileName);
printf("%s, %s, %s, %s\n", fileName.path, fileName.base, fileName.number, fileName.extension);
fseqFileNameDel(&fileName);
Output:
/tmp/, render, 0100, .exr
Example listing the contents of a directory with file sequences:
#include <fseq/fseq.h>
...
struct FSeqDirEntry* entries = fseqDirList("/tmp/", NULL, NULL);
struct FSeqDirEntry* entry = entries;
while (entry)
{
static char buf[FSEQ_STRING_LEN];
fseqDirEntryToString(entry, buf, FSEQ_FALSE, FSEQ_STRING_LEN);
printf("%s\n", buf);
entry = entry->next;
}
fseqDirListDel(entries);
Output:
render.rgba.0001-0100.tif
render.normals.0001-0100.tif
render.z.0001-0100.tif
Listing a directory with 100K files on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+:
pi@raspberrypi:~/dev/fseq-Release $ time ./fseqls ~/Desktop/Seq/Big/
shot51_scene95_normals.00916-10915.tif
shot97_scene29_normals.00771-10770.tif
shot19_scene33_rgba.00768-10767.tif
shot21_scene51_rgba.00839-10838.tif
shot24_scene13_normals.00804-10803.tif
shot29_scene63_rgba.00524-10523.tif
shot40_scene12_normals.00108-10107.tif
shot71_scene14_rgba.00606-10605.tif
shot39_scene78_rgba.00798-10797.tif
shot55_scene47_normals.00628-10627.tif
real 0m0.315s
user 0m0.142s
sys 0m0.171s