? in mp3 file name for playlists doesn't work

[jmpz]

Sorry for the confusing responses. It's a little hard to test at times, I added more playlists, and the file with the manually added '?' ultimately showed up with an error. Maybe rescan hadn't caught it previously. But it does seem that manually added ? does trigger it.

I just made a test playlist with 60 random tracks from my library that playback fine, but when added to a playlist, it seems like they all trigger an error. They were collected from all kinds of places over years.

Looking at the playlist file, the paths are accurate, but directories with a ? in the title return:

Code:

unknown folder for ../Anasisana/Where Am I Standing?/

files with ? return

Code:

no matching file for..../Anenzephalia/Fragments Of Demise/08 What Are They For?.mp3

All the paths are good if I cd from the playlists' directory. I can play through all the songs in a client, so the files are good. If I remove the ? it seems to resolve it.

[img]https://imgur.com/Swn4xsR.png[/png]
The playlist is here: Questions Playlist

I can make a smaller test and send over files as well, if that's helpful?


The forward slash (/) is not a valid filename character. If the ripper is trying to name the folder for the band SS/S using a folder name SS/S, the result will be a folder named SS with a subfolder S. It sounds like either your ripper or your playlist creator has some bugs with how it handles some special characters.

The playlist creator seemed aware that / is not valid and made the directory an underscore rather than a /, that should be ok? But it seems to cause a problem also.

(12-10-2022 18:14)simoncn Wrote:  The forward slash (/) is not a valid filename character. If the ripper is trying to name the folder for the band SS/S using a folder name SS/S, the result will be a folder named SS with a subfolder S. It sounds like either your ripper or your playlist creator has some bugs with how it handles some special characters.

In post #6 you said:

Weirdly though, if I just add a ? to another random file, and add it to a playlist, it doesn't happen. So it does seem to be mostly limited to these specific ones. I can playback the files back normally through minim otherwise, they show up in the correct album and display perfectly.

In post #8 you said:

I just tried a test of taking an mp3 file, adding a ? to the name via OSX finder, adding it to my library and a playlist, and seeing it fail. So it does seem reproducible to some degree.

From these two statements, I'm not clear whether this is working or failing with ? characters that you add manually to a filename without them.

[simoncn]

I will try this using a Mac to see if it makes any difference. I might not be able to get to this for a couple of days.

When using the Mac to copy files to the Synology, is the Synology library shared on your network using AFP or shared using SMB/CIFS? What version of macOS is the Mac running?

It seems clear from your previous post what is causing the ? problem (an invalid Unicode character in the filename in place of a real ?). What is not clear is how the file on the Synology ends up with this character in its filename. I suspect this is something to do with how you are copying files from your Mac to the Synology.

I can't see what could be causing the problem with SS_S as a folder name.

[jmpz]

Thank you, I appreciate your help no rush. I just started playing with playlists and stumbled into this.

The Synology library is shared using SMB, I'm using Mac OS 12.6, although particularly in the last test, many of those files have been on the drive since 2021, so weren't copied over or changed recently (some with a last modified date as old as 2014)

Thank you for looking into it Simon, cheers!

(12-10-2022 20:25)simoncn Wrote:  I will try this using a Mac to see if it makes any difference. I might not be able to get to this for a couple of days.

When using the Mac to copy files to the Synology, is the Synology library shared on your network using AFP or shared using SMB/CIFS? What version of macOS is the Mac running?

It seems clear from your previous post what is causing the ? problem (an invalid Unicode character in the filename in place of a real ?). What is not clear is how the file on the Synology ends up with this character in its filename. I suspect this is something to do with how you are copying files from your Mac to the Synology.

I can't see what could be causing the problem with SS_S as a folder name.

[jmpz]

One more experiment I tried:
I created a file in my playlist directory directly in the shell as empty?.m3u8, and populated it with a playlist I knew would throw an error, to see what the log showed for the file name encoding.

It comes back as:
Error: playlist _playlists/empty.m3u8: no matching file for ../Carta/Rehearsal Recordings/01 Track 01?.mp3

Another detail is that my file system on the Synology is BTRFS if that might make a difference.

[simoncn]

This is very useful information. Which shell are you referring to? The ? in your empty?.m3u8 filename is the "bad" ? (Unicode 0xf025) that is causing all these problems.

[lyapounov]

(13-10-2022 09:38)jmpz Wrote:  One more experiment I tried:
I created a file in my playlist directory directly in the shell as empty?.m3u8, and populated it with a playlist I knew would throw an error, to see what the log showed for the file name encoding.

It comes back as:
Error: playlist _playlists/empty.m3u8: no matching file for ../Carta/Rehearsal Recordings/01 Track 01?.mp3

Another detail is that my file system on the Synology is BTRFS if that might make a difference.

BTFRS is not the problem; but character encoding is.

Synology is based on Unix. Mac and Unix don't have the same system to encode non ascii characters. I had this problem once: é was one character on the Mac and became two characters on the synology though displayed as one on the mac.

Unicode on Mac is NFD while on Linux it is NFC

I solved it by avoiding SMB and using a software like transmit via SFTP

[simoncn]

(13-10-2022 18:27)lyapounov Wrote:  Unicode on Mac is NFD while on Linux it is NFC

This could affect filenames containing accented characters such as é but should not cause any problems for a filename containing an ASCII character such as ?. There seems to be something else happening here.

[simoncn]

I have tried a test using my Mac to access my Synology library from Finder using an SMB share. Everything works perfectly, with an audio file whose filename includes a ? being resolved correctly from a .m3u8 playlist with a file path entry containing a ?. I used TextEdit on Mac to create and edit the playlist and I used Finder on Mac to put the ? in the filename of the audio file.

In post #14, you said you created a file directly in the shell as empty?.m3u8. What did you mean by 'directly in the shell'? I think this is likely to be the cause of the problem.

[jmpz]

In post #14, I was referring to creating the file manually in a zsh terminal, rather than using another program. I don't do this typically, but I thought I'd try it to see if it made a difference.

Hm, I'm stumped then. While testing it now, I see it also not working for ö

Code:

Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/01 Oszillator.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/02 Zeit.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/03 Braun.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/04 Buntes Plastik.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Post Art/01 Porto.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Post Art/02 Economy.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Post Art/03 Aerogram.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Post Art/04 Blindensendung.mp3
Error: playlist _playlists/Musik Aus Strom.m3u8: unknown folder for ../Funkstörung/Post Art/05 track 5.mp3

While the other files in the playlist are loading correctly.

Here is that whole playlist:

Code:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:364, Funkstörung - Oszillator
../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/01 Oszillator.mp3
#EXTINF:326, Funkstörung - Zeit
../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/02 Zeit.mp3
#EXTINF:317, Funkstörung - Braun
../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/03 Braun.mp3
#EXTINF:247, Funkstörung - Buntes Plastik
../Funkstörung/Musik Aus Strom EP/04 Buntes Plastik.mp3
#EXTINF:371, Funkstörung - Porto
../Funkstörung/Post Art/01 Porto.mp3
#EXTINF:473, Funkstörung - Economy
../Funkstörung/Post Art/02 Economy.mp3
#EXTINF:384, Funkstörung - Aerogram
../Funkstörung/Post Art/03 Aerogram.mp3
#EXTINF:339, Funkstörung - Blindensendung
../Funkstörung/Post Art/04 Blindensendung.mp3
#EXTINF:344, Funkstörung - track 5
../Funkstörung/Post Art/05 track 5.mp3
#EXTINF:335, Freeform - Flyplate
../Freeform/Glob EP/01-01 Flyplate.mp3
#EXTINF:289, Freeform - Hoy
../Freeform/Glob EP/01-02 Hoy.mp3
#EXTINF:510, Freeform - Glob
../Freeform/Glob EP/01-03 Glob.mp3
#EXTINF:404, Freeform - Tour It
../Freeform/Glob EP/01-04 Tour It.mp3

It's able to find the Freeform folder but not Fünkstorung.
I'm creating these playlists in Swinsian, and I can play through them fine there, so I don't think there is a problem with the path.

I should say that I'm also able to access these files and artists via Minim otherwise. I'm only running into issues when trying to import the playlists.
Here is the metadata from playing one of these

(18-10-2022 22:40)simoncn Wrote:  I have tried a test using my Mac to access my Synology library from Finder using an SMB share. Everything works perfectly, with an audio file whose filename includes a ? being resolved correctly from a .m3u8 playlist with a file path entry containing a ?. I used TextEdit on Mac to create and edit the playlist and I used Finder on Mac to put the ? in the filename of the audio file.

In post #14, you said you created a file directly in the shell as empty?.m3u8. What did you mean by 'directly in the shell'? I think this is likely to be the cause of the problem.

[tarnkappe]

Is the m3u8 playlist file really stored as utf8? Make sure it is not iso-latin or windows-charset.