cScan Safety Assessment Fixes

Issue Identified

The safety assessment was being too aggressive and marking all files as “critical”, preventing any deletions.

Root Causes

1. Overly broad critical path matching: Using substring matching (if any(critical in filepath for critical in self.critical_paths)) was catching too many files
2. Running process protection too aggressive: Every directory containing a running executable was marked as critical
3. File-in-use check failing: Non-existent test files were being marked as “in use”

Fixes Applied

1. Improved Critical Path Detection

• Changed from substring matching to proper path prefix matching
• Only protect actual Windows system directories, not all user app directories
• Removed overly broad Microsoft folder protection in user space

# Before: if any(critical in filepath for critical in self.critical_paths)
# After: Proper startswith() check on normalized paths
for critical_path in self.critical_paths:
    if path_lower.startswith(critical_path):
        return 'critical'

2. Smarter Running Process Protection

• Only protect executables in actual system directories
• Don’t mark entire app directories as critical just because an app is running

3. Better Safety Categorization

• More specific patterns for safe files (cache, temp, crashdumps)
• Added specific safe locations (pip cache, npm cache, game caches)
• Proper path separators in patterns to avoid false matches

4. Fixed File-in-Use Detection

• Check if file exists before trying to open it
• Better error handling to distinguish between “file not found” and “file locked”

5. Enhanced File Categorization

• Separated .exe files into appropriate categories (installers vs system vs executables)
• Added crashdumps as a separate category
• Better handling of files without extensions

6. Improved Smart Suggestions

• Prioritize safe deletions (cache files, old temp files)
• Sort suggestions by safety level and size
• More categories: crashdumps, old installers, large media files

7. Added Safety Controls

• dry_run_mode: Test what would be deleted without actually deleting
• override_safety: Allow advanced users to override safety checks (dangerous!)
• use_recycle_bin: Send to recycle bin instead of permanent deletion (default: true)

Result

The safety assessment now correctly identifies:

• [SAFE] Safe files: Cache, temp, crashdumps in appropriate locations
• [USER] User files: Downloads, documents, media files requiring confirmation
• [UNKN] Unknown files: Files that don’t match clear patterns
• [CRIT] Critical files: True system files and actively used files

Files are no longer incorrectly marked as critical, while still protecting important system files and data.