A Shell Script for FLACing a broadcast WAV file and binary-comparing (including all wrapper and metadata) with original

ptArchive.sh

#!/bin/sh
for file ; do
	# We take every file we're given and...
	
	echo "FLAC'ing" $file
	# ...let the user know we've started working on it...
	
	EXT=`echo $file | ruby -e "puts STDIN.read.scan(/([^.]*)$/)"`
	# find out wether its name ends in ".wav" or ".aif"
	
	COMP_FILE="$file~comp.$EXT"
	# remember this for when we need to make the temp file to compare with
	
	flac --keep-foreign-metadata "$file" -o "$file~.flac" 2>/dev/null
	# We flac the file using the "--keep-foreign-metadata" option
	# so all of our magic Pro Tools, broadcast wav, Soundminer and
	# descriptive metadata is saved into the final product
	#
	# We supress FLAC's informative output on account of its obnoxiousness
	
	if [[ $? != 0 ]]
		# if flac returned an error...
		
		then echo "        >>>>>> FLAC FAILED TO COMPRESS FILE"
		# let the user know, and...
		
		continue
		# move on to the next file
	fi
	# Now that we've checked that, we can go on to making sure that the file
	# we've made decompresses into a file that matches our original, bit-for-bit
	
	echo "Roundtrip-comparing original to FLAC" $file
	# Let the use know how far we've gotten
	
	flac -d --keep-foreign-metadata "$file~.flac" -o "$COMP_FILE" 2>/dev/null
	# We de-compress our temporarily-created FLAC file and save it, using
	# the file name we constructed all the way up on line 11
	
	if test -e "$COMP_FILE";
	# if Flac actually decompressed the file
		then diff "$COMP_FILE" "$file"
		# run diff between the file we started with and the end result of a
		# complete compress-decompress run
		if [[ $? = 0 ]]
			# if diff had no error
			then echo "****** Comparison succeeded"
			# let the user know
			mv "$file~.flac" "$file.flac"
			# give our temporary flac file a permanent name...
			rm "$file"
			# and delete the file we started with, secure in the knowledge that
			# that recovering it is possible
			else echo "        >>>>>> COMPARISON FAILED!!!"
			# otherwise, if diff DID return an error, indicating the files are
			# NOT the same
			rm "$file~.flac"
			# remove the temporary FLAC file we made
		fi
		rm "$COMP_FILE";
		# remove the file we temporarily decompressed from our flac file, wether
		# it was good or not
		else echo "        >>>>>> FLAC FAILED TO DECOMPRESS THE FILE TO COMPARE"
		# if the flac -d invocation (remember that online 40?) never suceeded in 
		# decompressing the file, let the user know
		continue
		# go to the next file on our to-do list
	fi
	# we end up here if everything worked...
done