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[sandalaudio]

When I try to automatically rename music files or sort albums into folders based on the ID3 tag,
if the ID3 tag contains a colon symbol ( : ), MC automatically converts it to a slash (/).

e.g.
An album tag that says "Beethoven: Symphony No.5"
will create a folder "Beethoven/ Symphony No.5"

Use of colon or slash is fine for ID3 tags, but it's not good for files and folders.
Is there any way to change what substitution letter MC will use for auto naming?
For example, iTunes uses underscore (_) as a substitute for colon when renaming files and folders, which is much more preferable.

[glynor]

This is because colons are an alternate path delimiter on OSX (from the old classic MacOS days).  So, they're being converted to folder names.

You're right, though, in this case that makes no sense.  It should strip them from tags before pushing them to disk.

[sandalaudio]

Thanks for the reply.
I thought the MC's conversion of colon ( : ) to slash (/) was some kind of a convenience feature that tried to eliminate the colon.
I didn't realise that it was actually a legacy delimiter symbol, which is being interpreted by MC as a modern delimiter slash.

It would be great if MC adds a function to automatically replace ID3 tag colon or slash to an underscore when it is being referenced to name a file or a folder.
Having slash in the file and folder name really stuffs up things and other auto rename apps like Apple Automator crashes.

[glynor]

Thanks for the reply.
I thought the MC's conversion of colon ( : ) to slash (/) was some kind of a convenience feature that tried to eliminate the colon.
I didn't realise that it was actually a legacy delimiter symbol, which is being interpreted by MC as a modern delimiter slash.

I'm not absolutely positive, but I strongly suspect that MC is just sending the colon to the OSX system file management APIs, and it is being converted there:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13298434/colon-appears-as-forward-slash-when-creating-file-name

Actually, if you read that thread, it looks like it IS preserving the colon, but that's an illegal character on HFS+, and the Finder displays it as a slash.  Or something.

Even iTunes used the colon as the path delimiter as recently as iTunes 10.1.  Its a traditional MacOS thing from before OSX.  Now that Carbon is dead, I bet most of the applications out there have phased it out, but there is probably still some auto-correcting logic in the APIs somewhere.

JRiver probably needs to strip them out manually and replace with the "_" pre-emptively before passing them over.  Colons aren't legal in filenames on Windows either, so that shouldn't be too tough.

Now, I could be wrong and this could be a bug from a misplaced effort to auto-convert from MacOS Classic-style path names (perhaps older iTunes databases or something), but then it is just a bug.

[glynor]

Yeah.  I just tested it.

It is actually the Finder being weird.  The files really DO have the colon in their filenames.  The finder just doesn't show it that way.  Watch:
https://vimeo.com/101372674

This is certainly related to the way they converted from the classic MacOS system to the Unix system, with the vagaries of bringing HFS+ over and everything.

MC needs to strip them out like it does on Windows.

[sandalaudio]

Thanks for testing it out.

I will request JRiver for a feature to correct this, since it causes all sorts of strange issues after these files are created. I just had the Finder keep crashing and relaunching on me every time I tried to throw this file into trash.

What's interesting and ironic is that JRiver replaces any Double Quotation ( " ) symbols in the ID3 tags into underscore when doing the auto file name thing.
e.g.
An album ID3 tag called Beethoven: Symphony No.6 "Pastoral"
becomes
Beethoven/ Symphony No.6 _Pastoral_

[adamt]

The next build will convert colons to underscores when saving.  Thanks for the report!

[glynor]

* glynor gives Adam a high-five.

[adamt]

* glynor gives Adam a high-five.

High-Five!

[sandalaudio]

The next build will convert colons to underscores when saving.  Thanks for the report!

Wow. That's fantastic! Thanks for responding so quickly!