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Author Topic: File naming for albums that begin with "." on a Mac resulting in hidden folders.  (Read 2044 times)

pillshovel

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On OS-X any folder that starts with a "." is hidden.  I have a few albums that this affects.  Example: When I use MC23 to rename the files on the Kyuss album ...And the Circus Leaves Town, it results in a hidden folder so then no other software can see the files.  Would it be possible to have MC automatically replace the ... with _.. or something similar (this is how iTunes gets around it)?
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Awesome Donkey

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This is common with Mac and Linux.

I use the Rename, Move, & Copy Files tool with this directories rule;

Code: [Select]
[Album Artist]\regex([Album], /#^(\.*)(.*?)(\.*)$#/, -1)replace([R1],.,_)[R2]replace([R3],.,_)
The rule above, e.g. the [Album Artist]\ part can be changed/customized to whatever your desired setup is but the regex part for Album is what's needed here. Keep in mind, I run the above on all my new imported files (all previous files already had this ran on them) on Windows since Windows doesn't hide folders starting with a period by default. I assume if you can view hidden folders in Finder (and thus MC) it can be ran this way too, not sure.

Ultimately with the above, a cross platform library (Windows, Mac and Linux in my case) works great but it'll work great too if you're using Mac or Linux and have albums like the one you posted above that begins with a period. :)
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I don't work for JRiver... I help keep the forums safe from Viagra and other sources of sketchy pharmaceuticals.

Windows 11 2023 Update (23H2) 64-bit + Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Noble Numbat 64-bit | Windows 11 2023 Update (23H2) 64-bit (Intel N305 Fanless NUC 16GB RAM/256GB NVMe SSD)
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RD James

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If I recall correctly, [option] + [;] results in the proper ellipsis character rather than using periods.
It would be great if there was some easy way to set up a replacement table in MC rather than using complex expressions.
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pillshovel

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This is common with Mac and Linux.

I use the Rename, Move, & Copy Files tool with this directories rule;

Code: [Select]
[Album Artist]\regex([Album], /#^(\.*)(.*?)(\.*)$#/, -1)replace([R1],.,_)[R2]replace([R3],.,_)
The rule above, e.g. the [Album Artist]\ part can be changed/customized to whatever your desired setup is but the regex part for Album is what's needed here. Keep in mind, I run the above on all my new imported files (all previous files already had this ran on them) on Windows since Windows doesn't hide folders starting with a period by default. I assume if you can view hidden folders in Finder (and thus MC) it can be ran this way too, not sure.

Ultimately with the above, a cross platform library (Windows, Mac and Linux in my case) works great but it'll work great too if you're using Mac or Linux and have albums like the one you posted above that begins with a period. :)

Thank you, I will try that tonight and see if it fixes my issue. 
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pillshovel

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If I recall correctly, [option] + [;] results in the proper ellipsis character rather than using periods.
It would be great if there was some easy way to set up a replacement table in MC rather than using complex expressions.

That's actually what I was hoping for...to be able to set it up to automatically take care of this internally.
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pillshovel

  • Junior Woodchuck
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  • Posts: 78

This is common with Mac and Linux.

I use the Rename, Move, & Copy Files tool with this directories rule;

Code: [Select]
[Album Artist]\regex([Album], /#^(\.*)(.*?)(\.*)$#/, -1)replace([R1],.,_)[R2]replace([R3],.,_)
The rule above, e.g. the [Album Artist]\ part can be changed/customized to whatever your desired setup is but the regex part for Album is what's needed here. Keep in mind, I run the above on all my new imported files (all previous files already had this ran on them) on Windows since Windows doesn't hide folders starting with a period by default. I assume if you can view hidden folders in Finder (and thus MC) it can be ran this way too, not sure.

Ultimately with the above, a cross platform library (Windows, Mac and Linux in my case) works great but it'll work great too if you're using Mac or Linux and have albums like the one you posted above that begins with a period. :)

Maybe I did something wrong, but I tried the expression above and it didn't work. 

Here is a screenshot of what it did so that someone might be able to help.
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pillshovel

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I'm not sure if there is a problem doing it this way, but I played around with things and read a lot.

The following rule seems to fix that one single problem.  Please let me know if I'm missing something doing it this way.

[Artist]/removecharacters([Album], ., 1)


Edit:

I tried this rule "[Artist]/replace([Album], ..., _..)" which gave me results closer to what I wanted but this doesn't fix albums that have a single "." at the beginning.  Can someone help me put these two things together?  I have learned all I can tonight and need to get to bed.
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pillshovel

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Anybody know of a better way to do this?  Or could anyone help me figure out what I did wrong with the first suggestion?
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Awesome Donkey

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My expression above does work with the Rename, Move, & Copy Files tool. However it works best if you run it on your library from Windows (since it doesn't treat folders/files that begin with a period as hidden). It's worth noting that I've never attempted to run the expression from Mac or Linux so there's a chance it may not work there (looking at it, it's likely it doesn't possibly due to the slashes and/or differences in paths between Windows and Mac/Linux).

You might need to enable viewing hidden files in Mac's Finder app, go into your library of files and manually remove any periods at the beginning of the album folders yourself (then run MC's auto import again since the folder names will change). It's a bit of a pain, but it can be done.
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I don't work for JRiver... I help keep the forums safe from Viagra and other sources of sketchy pharmaceuticals.

Windows 11 2023 Update (23H2) 64-bit + Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Noble Numbat 64-bit | Windows 11 2023 Update (23H2) 64-bit (Intel N305 Fanless NUC 16GB RAM/256GB NVMe SSD)
JRiver Media Center 32 (Windows + Linux) | Topping D50s DAC | Edifier R2000DB Bookshelf Speakers

pillshovel

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Thanks...I'll give it another shot.
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