Wierd Character fixer

[steve]

Some people like to put fancy brackets and punctuation marks in their MP3 tag names, which is a real time waster if you have to sit there and rename a bunch of files to manually remove these illegal characters.

I would like a feature where you simply point to a directory, click one button, and all non-alphabetic and all non-numeric characters are removed from the file names in all subdirectories. For example the file name

myfavorite artist [[groovy artists today]], !cool.mp3

would simply be renamed to

myfavorite artist groovy artists today cool.mp3

or perhaps an option to rename the file to

myfavorite artist __groovy artists today___ _cool.mp3

where all the "illegal" characters are replaced with underlines.


As it stands now, I can use file renaming utilities to replace single characters or phrases, but it just seems like there should be an easier way.

[admin]

Hi Steve,

good idea. Is this list complete: ()[]{};,!

[steve]

Actually I've seen people put ASCII extended characters into file names, and MP3 tag fields. So you really want to just throw out anything that is not alphabetic or numeric, except for spaces or an underline. Trying to right a script that would throw out all these "illegal characters" is probably much more difficult than simply keeping all the "white list" characters.

This might even be useful for people with unicode problems that use English (I assume). So the white list would be:

a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z,A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M,N,O,P,Q,R,S,T,U,V,W,X,Y,Z,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, the "space character", and the underline character.

Anything else would be thrown out or replaced with a underline character (this way you could keep data that is segregated by category, but the characters used for the segregation are unacceptable unless you change them).

I took some visual basic classes, I just haven't spent any time on this, it takes me a long time to write programs.

[admin]

Well, I think a white list has its problems, too. For example motörhead.mp3 would become motrhead.mp3 or mot_rhead.mp3, but better would be motorhead.mp3 or motoerhead.mp3, right?
I'm working on a more flexible solution where you can define custom lists of characters to replaced by (optionally, lists of) characters.

[steve]

Those options would be nice too. I just wanted a simple tool to get rid of the nonstandard characters. That way I don't have to specify what I want to replace each character with.

I think a lot of people just use these characters because they think they look cool, not because they are necessary. Cheers!

[admin]

Yes, I see your point.
There are at least two chars that should be added to the "standard characters": - (hyphen/minus) and . (dot). Another two would be the normal parentheses (). Well, I'll make them user-customizable anyway...
However, I'm still unsure what to do with motörhead...

[steve]

I don't think there are too many bands that start with the name motorhead, so I think you'll be pretty safe here. The big concern of mine is that hard disks emulate the rocker life style, they burn out rather than fade away.

SO it would really stink to find out later that half of your mp3 collection is worthless because your file system is too complicated to read. There are of course archival solutions such as WRAR and disk imaging solutions, but they are of course very slow.

It's not hard renaming a few files from the command line, but it is time consuming. Unless there is a simple fix, I just delete the files rather than figure out what is really wrong with them.

Have a great day.

[steve]

For example if you get a bunch of mot_rhead _ whatever_it_is.mp3 in your directories it would be a snap to just replace

"Mot_rhead" with "Motorhead" in all the file names as an additional step with your file renaming since it would be doubtful any other files would share that combination of characters. You would just have to be aware of this or you would find it out later of course.

[admin]

Check out the latest BETA: try menu File/Rename Special/Keep Particular Characters..., it will do what you need.

[steve]

Hey Fantastic - I will check it out. I'll get back to you and tell you what I think.

[steve]

AWESOME -- IT WORKS WONDERFULLY! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!

Once I selected (made them "blue") all the directories in the main viewing area it worked wonderfully (otherwise the menu option is greyed out). No wonder Germany is such a beautiful place, it has wonderful people. Thanks again.

[admin]

Thanks for the feedback! Happy you like it. I like it, too!
I don't see any Germanness in the program, though. I rather think of myself as a monkey making a tool that he and other monkeys can make use of.

[admin]

... otherwise the menu option is greyed out

Note, that Rename Special is also found in the context menu of selected items.

[steve]

OK, thanks, it is a nice program, and there is some detail in it that I probably haven't explored yet. I had the opportunity to visit Germany a few years ago, and and for the most part it was a pleasant experience.

Perhaps that is all I meant by my compliment (without going too deep into that end of the pool (LOL)).

There are good programmers all over the world of course, I've admired some work from Russia, Japan and the UK. That's what is fun about the good side of computing, you can always make something better, and also give credit where credit is due.

When you burn CD's using the Windows UDF system, burners can be really picky, so this new feature should prevent a lot of coasters (marketing hint ).

I prefer Joliet of course, but Windows UDF is the default for some burners, which can get some people to scratch their heads when things go wrong...

MP3 files are kind of neat in that you can reconstruct the file names from the tag fields even if you burned them using ISO format (if you bothered to of course).

Have a wonderful day.

[admin]

Hey, wasn't MP3 invented by some Germans, too? It must be a great country, if only to lock yourself inside and work out some file formats.