Re: Use scanner to Rename File and Directory using single character of mask

[Casey Redis <caseyredisatwork gmail com>]

Thanks David.  I'll take a look at the code and see if it's something I 
feel comfortable tackling.

On 8/10/2015 10:12 AM, David King wrote:
> Hi Casey
>
> On 2015-08-08 23:17, Casey <caseyeasytag rcpt at> wrote:
> > Is it possible to create a mask that would use only a single character
> > of a replacement mask?  For example, given the following:
> >
> >    Artist = Cake
> >    Album = Motorcade of Generosity
> >    Title = Jolene
> >
> > could I create a mask that would rename to
> > /C/Cake/Motorcade of Generosity/Jolene.mp3
> >
> > I envision something like "/%a1/%a/%b/%t" where the "1" in "%a1" would
> > specify how many characters to output.
>
> There is already a long-standing bug about this (although the 
> description is not as detailed):
>
> https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=689424
>
> I do not have much time at the moment, but if someone wants to 
> implement this, the feature is in scan_dialog.c, the 
> et_scan_generate_new_filename_from_mask function.
>
> > The reason I'm looking for something like this is that the head unit in
> > my car will take a USB flash drive but has issues with more than 250
> > files or folders at any given level.  I'm hoping to reduce the nesting
> > by creating 26 directories (A-Z) at the root level with the full artist
> > name as a sub-directory under that initial character.
>
> This makes a lot of sense. Thanks for describing your use case!