File order issues about m4b-tool HOT 5 CLOSED

it would be useful to have a flag to "preserve-order"

You are absolutely right. But instead of another flag like --preserve-order, here is my proposal. The file ordering is a bit complex, because m4b-tool reads directories recursive by default. But if ONLY files are provided and no directory is included, i would preserve order by default, without the need of providing an extra flag.

What do you think? If you are happy with this, i take a look into this in the next days...

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Actually, I just thought of another wrinkle: Track numbers already embedded in the input files.

I'm not at the PC to test, but I don't think so OSes guarantee the order of expansion when wildcards are provided as an argument. Perhaps the flag is simplest - Alpha, Track Number, As-provided.

I haven't used it with folders. Would each folder produce a seperate output, or are they all merged? If they are separate, the sitting should be per output file...

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At the moment, all input arguments are recursively loaded if directory and added if file, then merged and then sorted alphabetically... so if you provide the following:

a.mp3
c.mp3
b.mp3

the merged result would be:

a.mp3
b.mp3
c.mp3

If you use folders, all files of the folder are loaded and sorted... e.g.:

m4b-tool my-folder2 my-folder --output-file="testing.m4b"

# although my-folder2 comes as first argument, it would result in:
my-folder/001.mp3
my-folder/002.mp3
my-folder/003.mp3
# ...
my-folder2/001.mp3
my-folder2/002.mp3
my-folder2/003.mp3

I never thought of a use case, where files are not named and sorted like they should be merged, but as i said: You are right... i think i will rework the file loading algorithm and think over a sane default behaviour instead of having extra flags for sorting... I'll provide a proposal in the next days.

As an idea: The arguments order should be left as is, regardless if it is a directory or a file - but directories should be loaded recursively and sorted, since as you say it is not guaranteed, that OS gives the correct order of files if a directory is provided.

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Ok, should be fixed. Sorting is only applied for single directories... if you provide more than one input argument (no matter if directory or file) the order is retained. Here is a nightly build for download, would be nice if you could give some feedback...

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Thanks for the prompt action!

Unfortunately I won't be able to test until Tues earliest - I'm not near the machine until then!

Will update when I do.

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