_PostPathFormatter breaks Windows-style path

[fireattack]

Describe the bug

_PostPathFormatter is used too aggressively in multiple places, which results in wrong folder name and structure.

Example no.1:

instaloader --dirname-pattern "D:\test" instagram

in command line on Windows, it will download files to .D꞉﹨test, instead of proper D:\test (because both : and \ are substituted).

Example no.2:

When downloading highlights, it by default download to a subfolder Path(name) / Path(user_highlight.title):

instaloader/instaloader/instaloader.py

Line 671 in 819426e

else Path(name) / Path(user_highlight.title))

However, this Path-object later is butchered by _PostPathFormatter at

instaloader/instaloader/instaloader.py

Line 597 in 819426e

dirname = _PostPathFormatter(item).format(self.dirname_pattern, target=target)

which broke all the \s on Windows.

My suggestion is to re-think where we want to substitute the invalid characters. Maybe only do it against filename/foldername (and should also replace "/" there for any OS, if we want to avoid unexpected subdirectory creation), not fullpath. Probably only against automatically generated fields, too.

Version: 4.3a1

[fireattack]

Also, I feel like full-width colon (U+FF1A) would be a better substitution for ":" than what we were using now (MODIFIER LETTER COLON, "U+A789"). It would be more consistent will others (we use full-width backslash, pipe, etc. already).

[fireattack]

Updated the description and title to reflect some new information.

This problem is more prominent than I think; it happens all the time when you download highlights (which by default saved to a subdir in the main dir).

[blablable123456]

Theres a trick that I use for quite a while and it works wonders. Simple put a 1 at the end of line 671. Of course this is just a fix for this isolated issue. By the way, this issue of folder formatting doesnt bug on linux, only on windows.

else Path(name) / Path(user_highlight.title + '1'))

[fireattack]

Theres a trick that I use for quite a while and it works wonders. Simple put a 1 at the end of line 671. Of course this is just a fix for this isolated issue. By the way, this issue of folder formatting doesnt bug on linux, only on windows.

else Path(name) / Path(user_highlight.title + '1'))

This doesn't seem to work. From the look of it, it would just change the folder name to {title}1, has no effect on \ issue.

(And I just tried, it indeed didn't work.:

)

[fishermansfriendsachet]

I really hope that this gets patched soon or somebody finds a workaround. It's stopping me from downloading highlights.

[fireattack]

I really hope that this gets patched soon or somebody finds a workaround. It's stopping me from downloading highlights.

Just remove .replace('\\', '\ufe68') from

instaloader/instaloader/instaloader.py

Line 111 in 819426e

ret = ret.replace('\\', '\ufe68').replace('|', '\uff5c').replace('?', '\ufe16').replace('*', '\uff0a')

will fix it.

[aandergr]

Thanks for reporting! This bug has been fixed with Version 4.4.3.