Question: How to skip folders with parentheses in filenames

[rob99uk]

First post here but must say I'm loving WinMerge (where has it been all my life?)

I have several folders which have part of the name in parentheses (e.g. "Photo Albums (WIP)" but these are still being included in comparisons when included in a long list of folders to skip in a filter file.
I presume it's something to do with the parentheses rather than anything else but I don't really want to have to rename them all.

It's also a little strange that folder names with spaces are ignored if you type them into the Folder: Filter box but work if you replace the spaces with a wildcard (?) but in filter files you can use spaces!

[sdottaka]

If you want to include () in a file filter, you need to escape them since they are special characters in regular expressions.
For example:

d:\\Photo Albums \(WIP\)$

Regarding the Folder: Filter box: I could not reproduce the issue, but it is possible that spaces are treated as delimiters (similar to ;).

[rob99uk]

Thanks, the escape character works fine in the flt file.
However, it does not work in the same way in the box on the selection page as there I need to remove any spaces and replace them with the ? wildcard. Strangely, you don't need to use the escape character for it to recognise the parentheses.

At least I now know what works.

[sdottaka]

I first thought it was not reproducible because I only tested with one folder.
After trying with two or more folders, I understood the issue.

When specifying !Photo Albums (WIP)\, the space is treated as a delimiter, so it is interpreted as three separate entries: !Photo, Albums, and (WIP)\.
This means it excludes Photo, matches Albums, and matches the (WIP) folder.