Photo: New Orleans, LA, October 2000

Appropriate Automation

June 4, 2005 | Life | Products & Opportunites | Software

Last night MacFLAC 2.1.2 (OS X) was choking on filenames of this form: dmb2005-06-01.akg483.v3.d1t01.flac

I suspected the additional dots in the filename were the problem, and there were 19 files to fix. Should I do it manually? Nah, let's learn something instead. I fired up the new Apple "Automator" application for the very first time, and literally in ten minutes I had created a set of actions to 1) multi-select the files; 2) copy them to a new place; and 3) find the offending string and replace it.

I searched for "dmb2005-06-01.akg483.v3." and replaced it with "dmb2005-06-01-akg483-v3-"

And less than a minute later 19 files were moved and renamed. It was absolutely amazing. What a dream. It Just Worked. And, I was tired (right before bed), had never used it before, etc. I'm sure there are other ways to do this, but Automator made it a breeze.

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