I have a car stereo in which I can plug a USB stick and play music or
audio book files. It handles MP3, OGG, FLAC, and so on, so it's great
that way. Newer vehicles let you play music from your phone, but I
have no music on my phone, so that's not something I use. However,
the software on the stereo that reads the files off the USB stick does
not sort the files. If the tracks are copied onto the USB stick in
order 10, 3, 8, 1, 4, 9, 7, 5, 8, 6, 2, then that is the order they
will be played (unless using shuffle mode, in which case the original
order does not matter).
Note that this technique applies only to FAT (FAT-32, VFAT) file
systems.
To sort the files, I copy the MP3 files I want into a directory on the
USB stick, and then run this script:
#!/bin/bash
#
# Sort files alphabetically in the current directory.
FILES=()
for FILE in *; do
FILES+=("${FILE}")
done
TEMPDIR=$(mktemp -d work_XXXXXXX)
echo ${#FILES[@]} files
for FILE in "${FILES[@]}"; do
mv "${FILE}" "${TEMPDIR}"
done
for FILE in "${TEMPDIR}"/*; do
mv "${FILE}" .
done
rmdir ${TEMPDIR}
I have this script, named sort-dir, in my PATH, so I type:
cd /media/usb/ARTIST/ALBUM
sort-dir
and now that directory is sorted and plays in-order on my car stereo.
Back when I wrote this script, I looked around for FAT file system
directory sorters, and there a variety out there, some commercial
offerings, but this tool does the job simply, quickly, and reliably.
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