Add !@B! modifier to collect marked files from both panels into a sin…

[YuryChaikou-ServiceNow]

…gle list file

The B modifier for !@...! and !$...! substitutions creates a temp file containing marked (selected) files from both the active and passive panels. When B is present, the command is executed once for all selected files rather than once per file.

Can be combined with existing modifiers: F (full paths), Q (quote spaces), U (UTF-8 BOM), W (UTF-16LE), A (ANSI).

Example usage in user menu (F2):
Compare two marked files with Beyond Compare:
open -a 'Beyond Compare' "$(sed -n '1p' "!@BF!")" "$(sed -n '2p' "!@BF!")"
or with diff:
diff "$(sed -n '1p' "!@BF!")" "$(sed -n '2p' "!@BF!")"

Mark one file on the left panel and one on the right panel (with Insert), then run the command to compare them.

[yulian5]

@YuryChaikou-ServiceNow Your example is not very useful: there is existing functionality to refer to selected file on passive panel (even the selection is not visible) using "!#" symbols. I'm using that to compare files in Far3 and far2l. I suspect it maybe overwritten in some cases with your changes. Here is working code from Far3 I have right now:
WinMergeU.exe "!\!.!" "!#!\!.!"
I have the similar code for Kompare on Ubuntu.
However new modifier maybe useful with multiple selections. And then: do we need the temp file for that? It's probably not like tens of thousands files should be selected (and even so).

[YuryChaikou-ServiceNow]

Thank you for the feedback! You're right that !\!.! and !#!\!.! can reference files on both panels. However, there are limitations with that approach that motivated this change:

1. No visible cursor on passive panel: the active file bar only shows on the active panel, so it's easy to lose track of which file !#!\!.! refers to on the passive side.
2. Same-panel comparison: !\!.! / !#!\!.! can't compare two files within the same panel since you need explicit selection.
3. Multiple selections: this is where !@B! really shines - select N files across both panels and operate on all of them in a single command invocation.

Regarding the temp file, I agree it's somewhat heavy for the common two-file case. An alternative could be to expand selected filenames inline (space-separated), but that would break with filenames containing spaces and would diverge from how !@! already works (it produces a list file). Keeping the same list-file approach as !@! maintains consistency and handles edge cases (spaces, special chars, large selections) cleanly. The temp file is deleted immediately after command execution.

The existing !@! / !$! / !\!.! / !#! behavior is fully preserved, the B modifier is only activated when explicitly specified in the pattern. No existing functionality is overwritten.

That said, if you have a different approach in mind (e.g. inline expansion for small selections, or a different modifier syntax), I'm happy to review and implement it.

[yulian5]

No visible cursor on passive panel

That's right and should be fixed one day.

Same-panel comparison: !!.! / !#!!.! can't compare two files within the same panel since you need explicit selection.

I use
WinMergeU.exe !&
It works, just need to select 2 files on the panel.

Otherwise quite useful feature, I think. As for temp file then it should be a separate task, too many changes are already. Let me test this.

[YuryChaikou-ServiceNow]

!& works when both selected files are in the same panel. I would like to have a single command for both same and different panels.

[YuryChaikou-ServiceNow]

FYI for this and other PRs: I work on a MacBook running macOS 26.3, so additional testing on Linux may be needed.

[yulian5]

!& is more like workaround. I agree that consistent approach is much better.

BTW I don't see that you updated help files for this change.

Then it may be a lot of corner cases with !@b! modifier. Some operations maybe possible (like get the sizes). But, for example, there is multiple files selection on both panels and I started command to copy those files with !@b! modifier. What happens in this case?

[YuryChaikou-ServiceNow]

Copy all files to one folder
cp $(cat !@BF!) ~/foo/

Zip all files, preserve folder structure
zip files.zip -@ < !@BF!

!@B! (without F) will generate a list of filenames without paths, some commands will ignore missing files in the current panel's working folder, some may return a warning/error.

Example (zip files.zip -@ < !@B!):

~/.config/far2l$ zip files.zip -@ < /var/folders/9k/3llv3c611qlflq4rwx96mj800000gp/T/far2l_1f6_0/FTMP622e0010.tmp
        zip warning: name not matched: farcolors.ini  <--- Files in passive panel
        zip warning: name not matched: key_macros.ini
        zip warning: name not matched: maskgroups.ini
  adding: ps.warned (stored 0%)  <--- Files in active panel
  adding: winstate (stored 0%)