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Programmes older than 30 days being removed when I elect to delete them

user-1820

You have a bug somewhere that is causing random file deletions (meaning tv shows that have been downloaded are being deleted). I think it is occurring when upgrading get_iplayer. It has happened to me twice now, once using Win7 and once using Win10 (different PC builds). Last time was just recently when I upgraded from 3.00 to 3.01.

user-30

This 'bug' report is poor quality. It contains no usable information. Please consider improving it.

thread-706.html

You may also wish to check the features list, particularly the second to last item - link up top.

user-1820

"Removal of recorded content which is more than 30 days old"

If this means your programme deletes downloaded content older than 30 days, what sort of "feature" is that??? That is a rather odd thing to put in a script designed to download files. Why 30 days? Why not 7, or 14 or 60 ...

Is there a script that can be run to output the deleted files? The verbose output did not show any.

user-2

get_iplayer does not delete programmes over 30 days old unless you answer in the affirmative when prompted to do so.

user-1820

I have now realised that and clearly there is no bug.

However, this feature is almost as bad as a bug. It is a very destructive feature (as opposed to something that can be reversed). The whole point of your great programme is to download files so that they can be viewed etc. Having a feature to delete them, that is *not* user initiated, goes against the whole concept, and is bad programming. What I thought I was (mistakenly) doing was deleting some sort of cache, not the actual files.

Please consider removing this "feature".

Peace Out.

user-991

May I suggest Bobo that if you were to move the downloaded programmes to another directory or backed up to another hard drive or storage you wouldn't get the removal message for content older than 30 days. That message refers to downloaded files that are in the default directory only.

user-1820

May I suggest that should not be necessary.

The wise, and what would be considered normal programming practice, answer would be to remove the whole idea of automatic (albeit with user intervention) file deletion altogether. If the author deems it necessary to have then have a separate batch file for it. The last place I would expect to find a question relating to deleting files I have downloaded is in the script that kicks off the whole download process.

user-991

Let me say Bobo that I use Windows 8.1 & I only use the CLI with the unsupported version of GiP 2.97 so what I type relates to my setup & experience.
As you should have seen that the downloaded programmes that are more than 30 days old that are in the default download directory do not get automatically deleted without user intervention.
On the CLI, it asks if you (only if there are programmes 30 days or older in the default directory) want to delete those programmes with a Yes or No option to be prompted by the user. If you answer Yes then the obvious happens & if you answer No then they won't get deleted & you'll get a message on the CLI to confirm they haven't been deleted.
You've asked why 30 days & no other amount of days. Well that fits in with the way the BBC iPlayer downloads work. If you were to download a programme using the BBC iPlayer then you have 30 days to watch it before it gets deleted.

user-1820

I am not sure I see the correlation between bbc content availability and deleting files you have already downloaded.

Regardless, I am sure we could argue the merits or otherwise of the way the script is structured. It is a great tool for what it does, and provides a great service to all those who use it, myself included.

Is it perfect? I am sure the author would agree it is not. This particular "issue" could be made a whole lot better simply by not including such an intrusive, destructive feature.

Peace bro.

user-1021

You might like to consider the --nopurge option.

If I recall correctly, this feature was added (by the original developer) to reflect the fact that the BBC generally allowed downloaded content in their own apps to play videos for up to 30 days. get-iplayer was, and still is, a tool to enable you to access BBC content legally, for the purposes the BBC permits. It's original intent was to enable people whose network connections and systems were not supported by the BBC apps.

Jon

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