Episode: 3959
Title: HPR3959: Download any HPR series with english file names
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3959/hpr3959.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:58:20

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3959 for Thursday the 5th of October 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Download any HPR series with English file names.
It is part of the series' bash scripting.
It is the first show by Newhost Gem Law, and is about three minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, a directory with the series name will be created and all shows will be renamed to show title dot MP3 inside it.
Hello all. This is Gem Log from Terrace B.C., Canada, just up near the Alaska Panhandle.
Some of you may know me from incontrad on SDF.org or as if it isn't on the Tilda Dot's own instance of Mascodon.
Now, the other day I finally got around to checking out HPR properly, even though my Mascopal Claudio M turned me on to it a couple of years ago.
I had just never gotten around to it.
Recently on a Friday night in IRC until the radio I noticed there were whole series on HPR and not only single shows.
And that got me kind of excited. I guess I'm easily excited.
Anyhow, something I could listen to at work or while driving.
Still, I managed to forget about it until just before I was leaving the house for work on Monday morning.
I rushed to copy over a few shows nearly at random onto my phone and headed out for work.
After I got my morning sorted out, I told BLC to play all and enjoy a couple of shows.
I noticed that each show I had chosen had a big post at the beginning.
I figured I could make one on at least something from my Mascopal Gem Log vendor.
I've been accumulating stuff in there for decades.
However, after break, I came back and couldn't remember which 4-digit number dot MP3 I had finished up on, which mildly irked me.
Well, as we all know, IRC becomes itch.
And I put my sad, regic skills to test scraping the HPR website with a custom bash script later when I got home.
A very custom bash script.
I call scrapers if any of the guys at HPR even breed the wrong way, it will probably break horribly.
On the other hand, I've had scrapers that look just as sad running for many years against a Canadian government site, so who knows.
All the script uses are some built-ins from bash along with sad and w-get for the actual getting.
My local instance of search and g was left smoking as I scrambled for sad incantations to string together, and not a sad guy.
Usage is simple, as the script only accepts one argument.
The 4-digit series number of the show we want to download.
It will create a der with a series name, and download every MP3 it finds, renaming each show to the show title.
I was tempted to doll it up with some niceties like options for a download der or a selector for a series with a dialogue of some kind, yadda yadda yadda.
But we all know what happens when you stretch a quick app with a bash script too far for the scripting language.
Hours of misery wishing you'd started with some other language.
So far I've used the script to download H series.
DU-SH tells me they add up to 2.2 gigs, so it seems to work well enough.
It comes with the same ironclad warranty as everything I write.
If it breaks, you get to keep all the pieces. Thanks for listening.
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