I use Bashpodder to handle my auto-download-through-XML needs (that’s “podcasting” to most of you, and is different from auto-downloading-under-program-control the way most of my audio files come in), and discovered a major problem with badly-formatted XML files published by WGBH Boston; the XML files have no (or few) returns in them, causing Bashpodder to fail in finding the <enclosure> containers. (Bashpodder as written can only find one per line, and since these have everything on one line, it can only find one enclosure.)

To fix the problem, I added immediately after:

file=$(wget -q $podcast -O - |

…the following snippet:

sed s/"<enclosure"/"\n<enclosure"/g - |

…which sticks a newline right before every <enclosure> container, forcing a new line. It appears to cause no ill effects on those XML files which are written properly, only affecting those very few (in my case one) which is structured so poorly. I’m sure those who are better in un*x can find a more efficient solution, but this one appears to work.

Unfortunately, since I do not mail into Gmail, nor accept mail from Gmail, I can’t inform the developer, “linc dot fessenden at gmail dot com” so if any of you know the guy, let him know, huh?