Expansion of ~ in -o

[JasonJAyalaP]

I may be doing something wrong, but ~ isn't properly expanded to your home folder when used in a template. It instead creates a folder with the name ~.

[jaimeMF]

It should be escaped in the template, not in the final filename, don't?. Depending on the video and the template, the filename could start with a ~ or ~username, and would produce an undesired effect.

[JasonJAyalaP]

Interesting. Expanding ~ is convenient when writing scripts to share with other people. For example, in the video downloader alfred workflow (which is a group of scripts around youtube-dl), several lines of python code are dedicated just to grabbing the current user home directory.

Not a huge deal, but definitely a gotcha that I tripped over a few times. If there's a clean way to add it and not run into problems with video/usernames with ~, I think it would be helpful.

[jaimeMF]

Actually it would need to add just one line of code (it's a function in the standard library), but I don't know if it should be resolved in the ouptut template or in the final filename, I personally think it should be replaced in the template.

[jojopi]

Not sure what platform you are using, but on *nix, ~ expansion should be done by the shell. Do you not just need to avoid quoting it?

youtube-dl -o ~/yt/'%(title)s.%(ext)s'

Providing duplicate ~ expansion in the application would make it impossible to create files starting with literal '~'.

[jaimeMF]

@jojopi Thanks for the hint, you can force creating files with starting '~' if you use a relative path: ./~foo.mp4, this wouldn't be expanded.

[JasonJAyalaP]

My little experience and strong bias lead me to argue that a more difficult ~ literal is better than a less intuitive expansion… but maybe that's just my lack of unix skills. The ~/Downloads/'template' thing works great and I have no further objections.

[pdelong42]

I know this issue is closed, but I feel there are certain aspects which are still not addressed.

I've had this same problem, but while using -o in my youtube-dl.conf file, and no amount of escaping seems to work (instead of expanding tilde, I get a directory which is literally the tilde character, and it's a pain to remove).

Other possible workarounds I've tried, which also don't work, involve trying to use ${HOME} in the filename template. But it fails to expand - it gets treated literally by youtube-dl - and no amount of escaping helps.

Should I open a new issue for this latter variation of the problem?

[phihag]

@pdelong42 Expansion works fine for me. Please open a new issue and include the complete output of youtube-dl when called with the -v flag.