[bug] Undeletable folder

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CaptainProton
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:00 pm

[bug] Undeletable folder

Post by CaptainProton »

MakeMKV v1.14.4
Windows 10 64-bit v1809 build 17763.557

I was ripping my Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom Blu Ray to an NTFS hard drive. I had copied the name of the movie from a website because I'm too lazy to type, apparently, and pasted it in the output folder path in MakeMKV, like this "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) ". I pressed the Save Selected Titles button, was prompted to create the directory, i confirmed, then it immediately gave an error because of the illegal character in the folder name. I replaced the colon with a hyphen and hit the go button again. It was humming along for a moment when I noticed an odd space in the Output file path being displayed as it saved the videos, just after the (2018) "D:\Video\Jurassic World- Fallen Kingdom (2018) \Jurassic World-Fallen Kingdom_t15.mkv".

This is the problem.

Directory names can not end with a blank character. If you try to rename a folder to add a space to the end, Windows truncates the name and clips off the superfluous blank character yet MakeMKV has happily created a directory with such a character (my fault because I essentially told it to do so, I realize this). This folder cannot be renamed or deleted via GUI or command line; the folder this folder is in cannot be deleted.

Fortunately I have nightly backups of the drive in question so it's no trouble for me to wipe and restore but this could be annoying or troublesome for others, especially those that rip to their system partitions.
Woodstock
Posts: 9912
Joined: Sun Jul 24, 2011 11:21 pm

Re: [bug] Undeletable folder

Post by Woodstock »

Yes, file and directory names CAN start/end with blanks. But Windows Explorer cannot deal with them properly, because it strips the blank off before passing it to the rest of the operating system.

You will have to delete the folder from a CMD.EXE prompt, by enclosing the directory name in quotes, as in:

Code: Select all

"D:\Video\Jurassic World- Fallen Kingdom (2018) "
You could also use the MOVE or RENAME command to make it possible to make it work in Explorer, as in:

Code: Select all

MOVE "D:\Video\Jurassic World- Fallen Kingdom (2018) " "D:\Video\Jurassic World- Fallen Kingdom (2018)"
MakeMKV Frequently Asked Questions
How to aid in finding the answer to your problem: Activating Debug Logging
CaptainProton
Posts: 6
Joined: Sun Jun 30, 2019 9:00 pm

Re: [bug] Undeletable folder

Post by CaptainProton »

Thank you for your swift reply. Please see my response, in video format:

https://youtu.be/H2goSOmWkc4
I suggest using the YouTube controls to set the playback speed to 2x.

I tried to run through everything as quickly as I could but I still had stage fright, alone, in front of my own computer, just knowing my mouse clicks were being recorded for all to see.
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