Patriot doesn't play DVD iso

[sjm]

I posted this in a "Playing DVD ISOs" thread, but there was no answer and thought this might be useful for people who run into my problem.

My original post:


I'm getting "Invalid file!!" when trying to play an ISO file (full extract with dvdfab or anydvd, then using dvdshrink to put the pieces where I want, eg, one ISO per tv episode).

Anyone else have this problem?

I've tried with both the original firmware and the beta firmware ES-51-283G-PCMPBO25-P02 and get the same error.

Is there a character limit to the filename or restrictions on certain characters? My naming convention can be something like:

Movie Title+ (yyyy,imdb=nnnnnnn,110m43s) [100%]os.iso

where the "+" tells me I have director's comments, the [100%] is percentage of original size (no shrink or shrink by how much) and the "os" is whether it will fit on a 4.3gb dvd or not (oversized).

What I've found is that one of my directory names contained the character "$" and that caused the "Invalid file" error on the player. Removing the "$" fixed the problem.

Patriot, is there any reason the "$" character is not allowed?

I use special characters like "$" and "_" when I have tons of files or directories in a directory and want special ones listed at the top when listing things alphabetically.

I'd hate to change my habits if there's no particular reason that "$" is not allowed in filenames for the Patriot player.

[Toolin]

The dollar sign ($) is a special character in most shells used in Linux (variable prefix). The PBO operating system is a Linux variant. I'm guessing there is a shell script or even just a system call involved somewhere behind the PBO GUI which is not properly escaping (quoting) filenames and is getting tripped up on the dollar sign. Properly written code can accommodate these characters, but only if the programmer took extra steps to anticipate their use, and sometimes they don't.

If I were you I'd avoid "special" characters in filenames. They can cause problems with other applications as well, not just linux shell scripts. For example, DOS or NT cmd scripts have trouble with ampersands, carets and a few other characters. Stick with letters, numbers, underscores, dot and hyphen if possible. I'd even avoid spaces, but I'm extra paranoid.

[aasoror]

The dollar sign ($) is a special character in most shells used in Linux (variable prefix). The PBO operating system is a Linux variant. I'm guessing there is a shell script or even just a system call involved somewhere behind the PBO GUI which is not properly escaping (quoting) filenames and is getting tripped up on the dollar sign. Properly written code can accommodate these characters, but only if the programmer took extra steps to anticipate their use, and sometimes they don't.

If I were you I'd avoid "special" characters in filenames. They can cause problems with other applications as well, not just linux shell scripts. For example, DOS or NT cmd scripts have trouble with ampersands, carets and a few other characters. Stick with letters, numbers, underscores, dot and hyphen if possible. I'd even avoid spaces, but I'm extra paranoid.

+1 couldn't have said it better.

[sjm]

Makes sense. Thanks.

[Ed73]

Thanks! my iso files work again!!! I also used the $ to put my videos folder at the top of the list. what is a good character to use instead of a $ ?

[aasoror]

Thanks! my iso files work again!!! I also used the $ to put my videos folder at the top of the list. what is a good character to use instead of a $ ?

underscore "_"