How to? LESSON: To use %@TRUENAME[] on filenames with semicolons in them, setdos /x-9

[Claire_CJS]

I know❟ I know.... Don’t have semicolons in filenames.

But when one is dealing with prenamed files (100❟000+ in a music collection)❟ or files renamed by programs that gather information .... These characters will end up in filenames because people type them up in track titles❟ which are usually the filenames for music.

So I hit a wall with an obscure William S. Burroughs spoken word track that has a semicolon in its title.....

I tried many things❟ including things I just learned here this week. And yet.... No amount of trickery can fix this.

Any clue?

>set foo=11_Salt Chunk Mary; Like Mr Hart, Kim Has A Dark Side To His Character.flac

>dir /b "%foo%"
11_Salt Chunk Mary; Like Mr Hart, Kim Has A Dark Side To His Character.flac

>if exist "%foo%" echo it exists
it exists

>echo %@UNQUOTE["%foo%"]  .... unquote works on it fine if in quotes
11_Salt Chunk Mary; Like Mr Hart, Kim Has A Dark Side To His Character.flac  .... unquote works on it fine if in quotes

>echo %@UNQUOTE[%foo%]  .... unquote even works on it fine if NOT in quotes❟ tho inadviseable because of filenames with right brackets in them
11_Salt Chunk Mary; Like Mr Hart, Kim Has A Dark Side To His Character.flac  .... unquote even works on it fine if NOT in quotes❟ tho inadviseable because of filenames with right brackets in them

>echo %@TRUENAME[%foo%]  .... but truename doesn’t work
T:\mp3\William S. Burroughs\1981 - You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With [WSB tracks only]\11_Salt Chunk Mary  .... but truename doesn’t work

>echo %@TRUENAME["%foo%"]  .... not even in quotes
"T:\mp3\William S. Burroughs\1981 - You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With [WSB tracks only]\11_Salt Chunk Mary"  .... not even in quotes

>echo %@TRUENAME["%@UNQUOTE[%foo%]"]  .... or even with this trickery
"T:\mp3\William S. Burroughs\1981 - You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With [WSB tracks only]\11_Salt Chunk Mary"  .... or even with this trickery

>echo %@TRUENAME["%@UNQUOTE["%foo%"]"]  .... or even with this trickery
"T:\mp3\William S. Burroughs\1981 - You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With [WSB tracks only]\11_Salt Chunk Mary"  .... or even with this trickery

>echo "%@TRUENAME["%@UNQUOTE["%foo%"]"]"  .... or even with this trickery
""T:\mp3\William S. Burroughs\1981 - You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With [WSB tracks only]\11_Salt Chunk Mary""  .... or even with this trickery

 

[Charles Dye]

I'm pretty sure this was to support the semicolon as a separator in include lists.

I really want to go back to 1989 and beg Rex to use the vertical bar instead of the semicolon for this syntax. But the DeLorean's in the shop.

 

[Claire_CJS]

Welp. I’m off to audition unicode semicolons and see if any are fit for the role.

[update: only one has a tolerable rendering; unfortunately it is double-width. But not an emoji.]

 

[vefatica]

You didn't try enough trickery. This is correct (v: is a subst for d:\work).

v:\> dir /k /m %fname
2025-01-07  11:50               5  a;b

v:\> echo %fname
"a;b"

v:\> echo %@truename["%@replace[;,%%%%@char[59],%fname]"]
"D:\work\a;b"

 

[Charles Dye]

That is tricky. I've used a three-part approach:

1. Replace all semicolons with some character not legal in filenames
2. Call QueryTrueName()
3. Then go back and change all the invalid characters back to semicolons

 

[Claire_CJS]

Sounds like working-as-designed but dang❟ how ’bout a setdos that just turns off “that semicolon thing”

i’m already doing setdos /x-4 before a lot of file operations....

 

[Claire_CJS]

[In general❟ more resolution with the setdos command would be extremely helpful. To be able to turn off JUST one feature]

 

[Claire_CJS]

In the end...

# Function to replace forbidden characters with alternates
forbidden_chars =            [';', '%' , '^']                   #Sorry❟ caret is a command separator for me!
forbidden_chars_alternates = ['；', '％', 'ˆ']
char_map = dict(zip(forbidden_chars, forbidden_chars_alternates))
def substitute_forbidden_chars(file_path):
    global char_map
    new_file_path = file_path
    for forbidden, alternate in char_map.items():
        new_file_path = new_file_path.replace(forbidden, alternate)
    return new_file_path
   
def process_file(file_path):                                            # process one file
    global forbidden_chars, forbidden_chars_alternates   
    rg_fix_bat           = "RG_fix.bat"
    abs_file_path = os.path.abspath(file_path)
    try:

        if any(char in file_path for char in forbidden_chars):
            with open(rg_fix_bat, "a", encoding="utf-8") as f:
                f.write(f"\n\n\n\nrem ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ BAD FILENAME ENCOUNTERED: BEGIN ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\n")                    # look pretty in our BAT file output
                f.write(f"    echo.\n")                                                                                                   # insert blank line in our STDOUT output
                f.write(f"    setdos /x-3\n")                                                                                             # turn off all variable expansion so we can use perent signs to rename files with percent signs
                f.write(f"    echo This file path contains forbidden characters: “{abs_file_path}”\n")                                    # let user know
                f.write(f"    setdos /c%@CHAR[1]\n")                                                                                      # switch to nonsense command separator during rename process❟ so we don’t have to worry about individual peoples’ command separator choices
                f.write(f"    echo Forbidden characters in name: “{abs_file_path}”\n")                                                    # let user know
                new_file_path  =  substitute_forbidden_chars(     abs_file_path)                                                          # subtitute new❟ valid characters in❟ for invalid characters
                f.write(f"    echo Trying to rename to new name: “{new_file_path}”\n")                                                    # let user know
                f.write(f"    ren \"{abs_file_path}\" \"{new_file_path}\"\n")                                                             # Rename command
                f.write(f"    setdos /x-3\n")                                                                                             # turn off command separator processing
                if "default_command_separator_character" in os.environ: f.write(f"    setdos /c%default_command_separator_character%\n")  # what I   try  to use
                elif os.getenv('USERNAME') == 'claire':                 f.write(f"    setdos /c^\n")                                      # what I  actually use
                else:                                                   f.write(f"    setdos /c&\n")                                      # what most people use
                f.write(f"    setdos /x0\n")                                                                                              # turn everything we turned off back on
                f.write(f"rem ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ BAD FILENAME ENCOUNTERED: END ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━\n\n\n\n\n")                    # look pretty in our BAT file output

            print(f"{Fore.RED}ERROR: {abs_file_path} contains one of the forbidden characters ({forbidden_chars}). The “RG_fix.bat” that this script produces will TRY to fix it❟ but it may not be able to handle these characters. You may need to rename the file yourself. Suggested to use these alternative characters: {forbidden_chars_alternates}{Fore.GREEN}\n\n")

 

[rconn]

Sounds like working-as-designed but dang❟ how ’bout a setdos that just turns off “that semicolon thing”

i’m already doing setdos /x-4 before a lot of file operations....

SETDOS /X-9

Turns off include lists (the semicolon).

 

[Claire_CJS]

SETDOS /X-9

Turns off include lists (the semicolon).

Oh geeze. There all along. thanks! I updated the thread subect!