If you list the contents of the store/ directory you'll notice a tag named ALL/ you have not created:

$ ls ~/myfiles/store/
-  @  @@  +  ALL  startrek  starwars  scifi

The ALL/ tag is a special automatic tag which includes all the files managed by Tagsistant. When you list store/ALL/@@ or store/tag1/+/ALL/@ or any other combination you get the same results: all your files.

This tag may seem somehow useless: what's the need of a tag that lists all my files? You may think: I want to narrow the list of my files by tags, not list them all, otherwise I would not be using a tool like Tagsistant. OK, then answer to this question: how do you apply an action to all your files, knowing that a recursive scan of the store/ directory is impossible since it would travel all the infinite permutations of all your tags? The answer is: using the ALL/ tag.

$ grep "John Doe" ~/myfiles/store/ALL/@@/*.txt

A common operation is rescanning all your files for new tags when you add a new autotagging plugin:

$ touch ~/myfiles/store/ALL/@@/*

This will force a new scan and by the way redoes deduplication too.

The ALL/ tag is also useful to retag your files. For example to add the tag picture/ to a file named "IMG_09394.jpg" you first need to locate it somewhere. Let's say it's tagged holiday/, so:

$ ls ~/myfiles/store/holiday/@/
[ ... ]
IMG_09394.jpg # here you've found the file
[ ... ]
$ mv ~/myfiles/store/holiday/@/IMG_09394.jpg ~/myfiles/store/picture/@ # holiday/ tag disappeared!

You've moved "IMG_09394.jpg" inside picture/, but you've forgot to add holiday/ back in the destination query, mistakenly removing that tag from the file! A much better way is to access the file from the ALL/ tag and "move" it from there:

$ ls ~/myfiles/store/ALL/@/IMG_09394.jpg
IMG_09394.jpg
$ mv ~/myfiles/store/ALL/@/IMG_09394.jpg ~/myfiles/store/picture/@

The file got its new picture/ tag without the risk of removing any tag by mistake, since ALL/ is a virtual tag and can't be removed.