filename checker

Question

Is there a software that can check for filenames in a certain folder. So that there wouldn't be any error when trying to burn those files into a dvd or any optical media. I always burn different kinds of files for my collection and often times I get a file rename error when using nero. Do those files still get burned to the disc even if I get those errors? Is there a separate tool for nero or other application to check for the filenames before burning them to disc. It really sucks when an application tells you that theres an error if you have already burned the files to the disc. I want to know which files should be renamed before I even burn them so that I won't be wasting anything

Answer 1

You don't mention your operating system, so I'll give a solution using POSIX tools, since they're available for every major operating system. They're available on all unix-like systems, but you have to install them separately on Windows (Microsoft's Services for Unix, Cygwin, GNU Win32 utilities, Msys, ...).

The find command¹ looks in a directory and its subdirectories recursively for files matching certain criteria. For example, the following command shows files under the current directory whose name contain one of the characters :, ; or ", or than are more than 64 characters long.

find . -name '*[:;"]*' -o -name '?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????*'

¹ _{The POSIX one. Windows has an unrelated command with the same name.}