Use Applescript to find files with certain conditions

Question

I am using a tool to batch convert audio files in APE format to MP3. I have thousands of files located in hundreds of folders and subfolders in my hard drive so I searched for all APE/FLAC files and then dragged and dropped them in the tool for conversion. The problem is I was not able to convert all the files successfully for a variety of reasons (original APE files are corrupt, etc.), as a result I was left with a situation where some of the folders have files convernted (both APE and MP3 in that folder) whereas others don't (APE only). Instead of manually go to each folder and subfolder to find which ones need me to convert is there an Applescript I can use to quickly list the APE files that have not been converted?

Answer 1

Hello
You may try the following shell script. Please specify DIR as the root directory to start searching. It will create output list named no_mp3_list.txt on desktop.
#!/bin/bash
#     list every *.ape file which has no corresponding *.mp3 file in the same directory
#     * name matching is done in case-insensitive fashion
DIR=~/Desktop/test                # root directory to start scanning
OUT=~/Desktop/no_mp3_list.txt    # output file
shopt -s nocasematch
while read -d $'\0' f
do
    [[ -e "${f:0:${#f}-3}mp3" ]] || echo "$f" >> "$OUT"
done < <(find "$DIR" -iname '*.ape' -print0)
And in case, here's a simple AppleScript wrapper for the above, which lets you choose the root directory.
set f to (choose folder with prompt "choose root folder to start searching")'s POSIX path
if f ends with "/" then set f to f's text 1 thru -2
do shell script "/bin/bash -s <<'EOF' -- " & f's quoted form & "
#     list every *.ape file which has no corresponding *.mp3 file in the same directory
#     * name matching is done in case-insensitive fashion
DIR=\"$1\"                        # root directory to start searching
OUT=~/Desktop/no_mp3_list.txt    # output file
shopt -s nocasematch
while read -d $'\\0' f
do
    [[ -e \"${f:0:${#f}-3}mp3\" ]] || echo \"$f\" >> \"$OUT\"
done < <(find \"$DIR\" -iname '*.ape' -print0)
EOF"
Hope this may help,
H