Hi, I work on windows 2000, sp4 with ActivePerl and Exiftool 5.46
I have to update some metadatas.
All work fine except with some files within character "~" in the name.
If this character is at the begining of the name, like "~5717028.jpg", the update works fine.
If the character is somewhere inside the name like "PHOTOS~1.JPG", exiftool return this error :
Error renaming C:\PERRIC\original\PHOTOS~1.JPG

Platform image source is MacOS, upload onto our windows 2000 server through our web site.

Thanks for your help.

Didier

From what I can recall of Windows filename API's, in the shift from the DOS 8.3 (8 character filename, 3 character extension) naming to long names (in Win95) the older 8.3 filename calls truncated the file using ~'s and numbers. If you are then using the same DOS API calls to try and create "PHOTOS~1.JPG_original" then it breaks the 8.3 naming convention and the call will fail.

It's been so long (10 years) since I did this I can't recall the name of the long filename aware API, but it might give you a place to start looking, if that helps: it's also easy to test - stop ExifTool from backing up the changes by using the "-overwrite_original" flag and see if it works (but please take care to do this on a copy of your images !).

--
Ian Spray

I think Ian is correct with his 8.3 theory. I also remember something about the long filenames getting converted to the "~###" for 8.3 compability.

The fact that the "_original" file was created and the existing file disappeared indicates that the rename actually succeeded, and what failed was actually the subsequent tests to verify that the "_original" file existed.

But I think that regardless of where the failure is occuring, it is best to either avoid using "~" in file names, or use the -o option to avoid creating files with extensions longer than 3 characters.

You can try Ian's suggestion of using the "-overwrite_original" option, but there is a chance that this will fail too because in this case ExifTool first writes to a temporary file ending in "_exiftool_tmp", which it then must rename.