On Wed 20 Mar 2019 at 08:08:56 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 10:34:42AM +0100, Pierre Frenkiel wrote:
> > On Tue, 19 Mar 2019, riveravaldez wrote:
> >
> > > Maybe worth mentioning: youtube-dl, exceptionally useful and simple CLI
> > > tool.
> >
> > useful and simple... but it works only for urls with alphanumeric
> > characters
> > I tried with an url containing ? and &, and I got nothing
>
> You probably forgot to quote the URL in your shell command. If you don't
> quote it, the & is special to the shell and will cause the command to
> be split at that point, with the first half being run as a background
> command, and the second half being run as a foreground command.
>
> > I tried also by escaping ? and & with \, and it was not better.
> > I'll send you an example later, if you are not convinced...
>
> That should work. An example of the failure would be helpful.
>
> Generally speaking, though, just wrap the whole URL in single quotes
> and you should be fine.
This is a trick I find very useful too: RightClick on a google hit,
type a, then paste the address into this function on an xterm:
function gy-in-quotes {
[ -z "$1" ] && printf '%s\n' "Usage: $FUNCNAME 'URL' (must be in
single quotes!)
strips the google prefix (up to url=) and suffix (from &usg=) from the
argument,
translates various common %nn sequences in the URL, and retrieves it."
>&2 && return 1
youtube-dl $(sed -e
's/http.*url=//;s/&usg=.*$//;s/%2F/\//g;s/%3A/:/g;s/%3D/=/g;s/%3F/?/g;s/%25/%/g'
<<<"$1") # % characters must be edited last
}
The same idea works of course for wget:
function wg-in-quotes {
[ -z "$1" ] && printf '%s\n' "Usage: $FUNCNAME 'URL' (must be in
single quotes!)
strips the google prefix (up to url=) and suffix (from &usg=) from the
argument,
translates various common %nn sequences in the URL, and retrieves it."
>&2 && return 1
wget $(sed -e
's/http.*url=//;s/&usg=.*$//;s/%2F/\//g;s/%3A/:/g;s/%3D/=/g;s/%3F/?/g;s/%25/%/g'
<<<"$1") # % characters must be edited last
}
Of course, I only type gy-<TAB> or wg-<TAB>, but the function name
reminds me to add the quotes, else all hell breaks loose.
Actually I don't call youtube-dl as above, because I have two helper
functions which do things like history logging to prevent me
accidentally downloading the same video twice.
Cheers,
David.
