trouble expanding ${HOME} in output file template, using youtube-dl.conf

[pdelong42]

I'm having an issue expanding environment variables from within the argument to the -o command-line arg, while using it within the youtube-dl.conf file. Admittedly, I've only tried $HOME so-far, but I can't imagine it being specific to only that var. See the sample output below.

Escaping special characters doesn't seem to help. I also have the same problem with tilde expansion, and I can provide some sample output for that case too, if desired.

Naturally, I wouldn't classify this as a critical issue, but it would be nice to keep the same config file across all the hosts I use, without having to hard-code a different home-directory for each place it lives.

bash-3.2$ cat ~/.config/youtube-dl.conf 
-o ${HOME}'/%(extractor)s.com/%(uploader)s/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s' -v
bash-3.2$ pbpaste | xargs youtube-dl
[debug] System config: []
[debug] User config: ['-o', '${HOME}/%(extractor)s.com/%(uploader)s/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s', '-v']
[debug] Command-line args: ['http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Y73sPHKxw']
[debug] youtube-dl version 2013.10.17
[debug] Python version 2.7.2 - Darwin-12.5.0-x86_64-i386-64bit
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[youtube] Setting language
[youtube] a1Y73sPHKxw: Downloading video webpage
[youtube] a1Y73sPHKxw: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] a1Y73sPHKxw: Extracting video information
[download] Destination: ${HOME}/youtube.com/cregets/Dramatic Chipmunk-a1Y73sPHKxw.mp4
[download] 100% of 232.12KiB in 00:00
bash-3.2$ find $HOME -name \*a1Y73sPHKxw\* -print
/Users/pd72/${HOME}/youtube.com/cregets/Dramatic Chipmunk-a1Y73sPHKxw.mp4
bash-3.2$ 

[phihag]

youtube-dl is not a shell script, and therefore can't really expand variables or other shell constructs. Since version 2013.10.22 it can, however, expand user names. Simply set the configuration to

-o '~/%(extractor)s.com/%(uploader)s/%(title)s-%(id)s.%(ext)s' -v

Then, type

sudo youtube-dl -U

to update. As mentioned above, you need 2013.10.22 or newer. I'm releasing as we speak, but since I'm currently on an extremely slow network, it may take a couple of minutes until the new version is out. Thanks for the report!

[pdelong42]

Thanks, that works great! I prefer tilde-expansion anyway. :-) (Mucking about with $HOME was just an attempt at a workaround anyway, since I couldn't get tilde-expansion working earlier.)