On Fri, 2012-07-13 at 15:57 +0100, James Morris wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My sampler app has Non Session Mangement implemented but is currently
> still referring to external files by their original path.
>
> I want to use the symlink method as discussed fairly extensively here
> but I'd like to know if there is any recommended strategy for naming
> the symlink of a sample.
>
> It could so happen that as far as the filesystem is concerned the only
> discerning uniqueness between two samples is in the path (ie
> kit1/snare1.wav and kit2/snare1.wav).
>
>
> I've come up with three possible solutions to this (in my current order
> of preference):
>
>
> 1) symlink-to-sample created in a subdir named using a hash* of the
> full path to external file
>
> 2) painstakingly re-create the full path within the session dir and add
> the symlink into that.
>
> 3) some horrible text manipulation of the full path (ie replace / with
> _) that is bound to fail.
>
>
> * J. Liles mentioned SHA1 here:
>   http://linuxaudio.org/mailarchive/lad/2012/3/30/189343
>
> Are there other/better options or disagreements about (1) being a good
> choice over the other options I've presented?

I just used the original name of the file, with a number added for
uniqueness if necessary (which is very seldom the case).  It works and
is much more human-friendly and straightforward than the above options.
A "make this path unique by sticking a number on the end of it" function
turns out to be pretty useful anyway.

Of course, you need to actually check for existence of files to create
it, which might be a problem in some cases (though not any I've
encountered), but anything that assumes a mapping based on the current
path is a unique identifier for a particular file's contents is bound to
fail anyway.