[MPlayer-users] Files with escaped names don't open

[Rich Felker]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2007 at 11:11:07AM -0400, Jack Smith wrote:
> On 11/5/07, Mark Tilford <ralphmerridew at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I have some videos with special names (containing spaces or brackets).
> >  System is Ubuntu.
> >
> > If I try to open one of them from the file manager, I get an error
> > "Failed to open file:///...%20...".  If I choose "open with custom
> > command / gmplayer", I get the same problem.  If I "open with custom
> > command / mplayer", it works fine.
> >
> > Watching with ps indicates that in the first two cases, the filename
> > is passed as an escaped URL, and in the third as a filename.
> >
> > In the past, I had been using the Ubuntu packages; I recently switched
> > to an svn snapshot.
> >
> > Any ideas how to get it working again?
> 
> I use Fedora myself, but my mplayer hates spaces and isn't too fond of
> brackets either.  Usually works to wildcard the characters you're
> having trouble with and you can always rename the files.

MPlayer has no such problem with spaces or any other characters in
filenames. I suspect you just don't know how to use your shell...
Hint: quoting is required to prevent the _shell_ from interpreting
special chars.

And yes MPlayer's handling of file:// urls is incorrect; it just
interprets everything after the file:// as a literal filename. Just
don't use file:// urls. Pass the name bare by itself without any
escaping. Patches to fix file:// urls to conform to the relevant url
standards are of course welcome..

Rich