NAME
moosic - a command-line client for the Moosic jukebox system.
SYNOPSIS
moosic [options] command [options] [command arguments]
DESCRIPTION
The moosic program is the command-line interface to the Moosic jukebox
system. It communicates with moosicd(1), the Moosic server, querying
the server for information and telling the server what to do. moosic
will not be able to do very much unless moosicd is running. When
moosicd isn’t already running, moosic will automatically start it for
you, unless you specifically request otherwise (with the
--no-startserver option).
USAGE
moosic works by sending a command to the Moosic server and returning
the response, if any. The first non-option argument given to moosic is
the name of the command to be performed. This command name is case-
insensitive, and all non-alphanumeric characters in it are ignored.
You can use the "help" command to quickly and easily view the names of
all the available commands and to get a brief description of individual
commands. You can also use "moosic --showcommands" to display the
short descriptions of all the commands at once. The "COMMANDS" section
below lists the full details of each command. There are very many
commands, so you should start by just learning a few commonly used
commands, and only learning others as you feel the need. I recommend
starting with the following short command vocabulary: add, list, stop,
play, and shuffle.
For example, "moosic add foo.mp3" adds the file foo.mp3 (in the current
directory) to the end of the song queue and returns you immediately
back to your shell prompt without printing any output (unless an error
occurs). Compare with "moosic list", which will list the contents of
the song queue. Note that if the song queue is empty, "moosic list"
will not display anything.
OPTIONS
Most of the options for moosic are only relevant if they are used with
one of the commands that take a filelist argument. See "COMMANDS" for
the definition of a filelist. The only shuffling options that don’t
mutually exclude each other are -d and -a. Shuffling options that are
named later on the command line take precedence over ones that occur
earlier. All options must be named immediately before the command
given to moosic or immediately after the command; options placed within
the list of the command’s arguments will not be interpreted as options.
-g, --shuffle-global
This option causes moosic to shuffle the entire filelist after
directory expansion has taken place, before sending the filelist to
the Moosic server. This is the default behavior. This option is
only meaningful if used in conjunction with a command that accepts
a filelist.
-d, --shuffle-dir
This option causes moosic to shuffle the results of expanding the
directories named in the filelist. This option is only meaningful
if used in conjunction with a command that accepts a filelist.
-a, --shuffle-args
This option causes moosic to shuffle the actual command line
arguments that comprise the filelist. This option is only
meaningful if used in conjunction with a command that accepts a
filelist.
-o, --inorder
When this option is used, moosic doesn’t shuffle the filelist named
on the command line at all. Rather, the order specified on the
command line is preserved. This option is only meaningful if used
in conjunction with a command that accepts a filelist.
-s, --sort
When this option is used, moosic sorts the filelist
lexicographically after it has been expanded (through directory
recursion or auto-finding or the like). The order specified on the
command line is ignored. This option is only meaningful if used in
conjunction with a command that accepts a filelist.
-r, --no-recurse
Using this option prevents moosic from replacing directories named
in the filelist with a recursive traversal of their contents.
-n, --no-file-munge
Using this option prevents moosic from modifying the names in the
expanded filelist. Normally, moosic converts relative filenames
into absolute filenames before sending the names to moosicd, but
this is generally not desirable behavior if you want to insert
items that aren’t local files into the queue (such as URLs). This
option is only meaningful if used in conjunction with a command
that accepts a filelist.
-i, --ignore-case
Treats any given regular expressions as if they were case-
insensitive. This option is only meaningful if used in conjunction
with a command that accepts one or more regular expressions as
arguments. This option is syntactic sugar, since the regular
expressions supported by Moosic can also be made case-insensitive
by including "(?i)" within the regular expression.
-f, --auto-find
This option causes each string in the filelist with the results of
performing a "fuzzy" search for music files. "Fuzzy" matching is
done by simplifying all the candidate filenames (by lowering the
case and removing all non-alphanumeric characters except slashes)
and then testing to see if the search string (which has been
similarly simplified) is contained in any of the filenames. The
list of candidate filenames is obtained by recursively traversing
the file hierarchy rooted at the directory specified by the
--music-dir option (which has a default value of ~/music/).
For example, if you use "moosic -f add severedgoddess", and the
file ~/music/Meat_Puppets/Severed_Goddess_Hand.mp3 exists, then
this file will be included in the list of files to be added to the
queue. Similarly, if you use "moosic -f pre nesad", and the
directory ~/music/J/Janes Addiction/ exists, then all the files in
this directory (and its subdirectories) will be included in the
list of files to be prepended to the queue.
This option is only meaningful if used in conjunction with a
command that accepts a filelist. Beware that using this option can
cause moosic to take a long time to complete if the directory tree
being searched contains a very large number of files.
-F, --auto-grep
This option enables behavior very much like that of the --auto-find
option, except that regular expression searching is used instead of
the "fuzzy" search scheme. Specifically, each string in the
filelist is treated as a regular expression, and is replaced with
all the filenames that match the expression. As with --auto-find,
the filenames that are eligible for matching are obtained by
traversing the directory named with the --music-dir option
(defaulting to ~/music/ if --music-dir is not used). Essentially,
"moosic -F prepend something" is semantically equivalent to "moosic
prepend `find ~/music/ | grep something`", but is syntactically a
lot sweeter.
This option is only meaningful if used in conjunction with a
command that accepts a filelist. Beware that using this option can
cause moosic to take a long time to complete if the directory tree
being searched contains a very large number of files.
-m directory, --music-dir directory
This option controls which directory is used for searching when the
"auto-find" or "auto-grep" feature is enabled. These automatic
searches are limited to the file hierarchy rooted at the directory
specified by this option. When this option is not used, the
~/music/ directory is used as a default. This option is only
meaningful if either --auto-find or --auto-grep is used.
-S, --showcommands
Prints a list of the commands that may be used with moosic and then
exits. Note that this output is quite copious, so you will
probably want to pipe it to a text pager, such as less.
-h, --help
Prints a short help message that explains the command line options
and then exits.
-v, --version
Prints version information and then exits.
-c directory, --config-dir directory
This option is not needed under normal circumstances. It should
only be used if you want moosic to communicate with an instance of
moosicd which was invoked with the -c/--config option. Using this
option tells moosic to search the specified directory for the files
which are usually found in ~/.moosic/.
-t host:port, --tcp host:port
This option tells moosic to communicate with a Moosic server that
is listening to the specified TCP/IP port on the specified host.
Running a Moosic server that accepts requests via TCP/IP is not
recommended because it is a security risk.
-N, --no-startserver
This option prevents moosic from trying to automatically start
moosicd if it can’t contact a Moosic server.
-U, --allow-unplayable
This option allows songs that the server doesn’t know how to play
to be added into the song queue.
-C, --current-in-list
This option causes the currently playing song to be printed at the
top of the output of the "list" and "plainlist" commands. It has
no effect if an argument is given to these commands or if used with
other commands.
COMMANDS
Any of these commands may be specified with any mixture of upper-case
and lower-case letters, and non-alphabetic characters (such as ’-’) may
be omitted.
Many of these commands accept a range argument. A range is a pair of
colon-separated numbers. Such a range addresses all items whose index
in the song queue is both greater than or equal to the first number and
less than the second number. For example, "3:7" addresses items 3, 4,
5, and 6. If the first number in the pair is omitted, then the range
starts at the beginning of the song queue. If the second number in the
pair is omitted, then the range extends to include the last item in the
song queue. A range can also be a single number (with no colon), in
which case it addresses the single item whose index is that of the
given number. Negative numbers may be used to index items from the end
of the list instead of the beginning. Thus, -1 refers to the last item
in the song queue, -2 refers to the second-to-last item, etc.
Beware that a negative number that immediately follows a moosic command
is liable to be incorrectly interpreted as an option, so option
processing should be explicitly terminated with an argument of "--"
between the command and the number. This is illustrated by the
following example, which removes the last item in the queue: "moosic
del -- -1"
Alternatively (and perhaps more conveniently), you can prevent negative
numbers from being interpreted as options by preceding the range with a
single character that can’t be mistaken for a number or an option (i.e.
any character that isn’t a digit or a dash). Example: "moosic list
/-15:-9". You can also place such a character at the end of the range
if you think it makes it look prettier. Example: "moosic list
/-15:-9/". The bracketing characters surrounding a range need not be
the same: "moosic shuffle '[-13:8]'". Notice how the preceding example
surrounded the range in quotes to prevent the shell from treating the
"[" and "]" characters specially (since shells have a habit of doing
things like that).
Querying for information
These commands print useful bits of information to standard output.
help [command ...]
Prints a brief description of the moosic commands named as
arguments. If no arguments are given, a list of all the available
moosic commands is printed.
current
Print the name of the song that is currently playing.
curr
An alias for "current".
current-time [format]
Print the amount of time that the current song has been playing.
By default, this time is printed in a format of
"hours:minutes:seconds", but if a different format is desired, a
string argument can be given to specify it. The format should be a
string that is appropriate for passing to the strftime(3) function.
list [range]
Print the list of items in the current song queue. A whole number
is printed before each item in the list, indicating its position in
the queue. If a range is specified, only the items that fall
within that range are listed. Remember that the song queue does
not contain the currently playing song.
plainlist [range]
Print the current song queue without numbering each line. If a
range is specified, only the items that fall within that range are
listed. This output is suitable for saving to a file which can be
reloaded by the "pl-append", "pl-prepend", "pl-insert", and "pl-
mixin" commands.
history [number]
Print a list of items that were recently played. The times
mentioned in the output of this command represents the time that a
song finished playing. If a number is specified, then no more than
that number of entries will be printed. If a number is not
specified, then the entire history is printed. Note that moosicd
limits the number of items stored in its history list.
hist [number]
An alias for "history".
state
Print the current state of the music daemon.
status
An alias for "state".
length
Print the number of items in the queue.
len An alias for "length".
ispaused
Show whether the current song is paused or not. If the song is
paused, "True" is printed and moosic returns normally. If the song
is not paused, "False" is printed and moosic returns with a non-
zero exit status (which happens to be 2 for no particular reason).
islooping
Show whether the server is in loop mode. If the server is in loop
mode, "True" is printed and moosic returns normally. If not,
"False" is printed and moosic returns with a non-zero exit status
(which happens to be 2 for no particular reason).
isadvancing
Show whether the server is advancing through the song queue. If the
server is advancing, "True" is printed and moosic returns normally.
If not, "False" is printed and moosic returns with a non-zero exit
status (which happens to be 2 for no particular reason).
version
Print version information for both the client and the server, and
then exit.
Adding to the song queue
These commands will add to the queue of items to be played. Many of
these commands accept a filelist argument. A filelist is a list of one
or more files or directories. Any directories named in the list will
be replaced by a list of files produced by recursively traversing the
contents of the directory (unless the --no-file-munge option or
--no-recurse option is being used). Depending on the shuffling options
specified when invoking moosic, the list will be shuffled before being
added to the Moosic server’s queue.
append filelist
Add the files to be played to the end of the song queue.
add filelist
An alias for "append".
pl-append playlist-file ...
Add the items listed in the given playlist files to the end of the
song queue. If "-" (a single dash) is given as the name of a
playlist file, data will be read from from standard input instead
of trying to read from a file named "-".
pl-add playlist-file ...
An alias for "pl-append".
prepend filelist
Add the files to be played to the beginning of the song queue.
pre filelist
An alias for "prepend".
pl-prepend playlist-file ...
Add the items listed in the given playlist files to the beginning
of the song queue. If "-" (a single dash) is given as the name of
a playlist file, data will be read from from standard input instead
of trying to read from a file named "-".
mixin filelist
Add the files to the song queue and reshuffle the entire song
queue.
pl-mixin playlist-file ...
Add the items listed in the given playlist files to the song queue
and reshuffle the entire song queue. If "-" (a single dash) is
given as the name of a playlist file, data will be read from from
standard input instead of trying to read from a file named "-".
replace filelist
Replace the current contents of the song queue with the songs
contained in the filelist.
pl-replace playlist-file ...
Replace the current contents of the song queue with the songs named
in the given playlists.
insert filelist index
Insert the given items at a given point in the song queue. The
items are inserted such that they will precede the item that
previously occupied the specified index.
pl-insert playlist-file ... index
Insert the items specified in the given playlist files at a
specified point in the song queue. If "-" (a single dash) is given
as the name of a playlist file, data will be read from from
standard input instead of trying to read from a file named "-".
putback
Reinsert the current song at the start of the song queue.
stagger-add filelist
Adds the file list to the end of the song queue, but only after
rearranging it into a "staggered" order. This staggered order is
very similar the order created by the stagger command (described
below). Each element of the file list (before replacing
directories with their contents) specifies a category into which
the expanded file list will be divided. The staggered order of the
list being added is formed by taking the first item from each
category in turn until all the categories are empty. This may be a
bit difficult to understand without an example, so here is a
typical case:
Initially, the queue contains a few items.
[0] /music/a.ogg
[1] /music/b.mp3
[2] /music/c.mid
Additionally, there are two directories that each contain a few
files:
$ ls /music/X/ /music/Y/
X:
1.ogg 2.ogg 3.ogg
Y:
1.ogg 2.ogg 3.ogg 4.ogg
After executing "moosic -o stagger-add /music/Y /music/X", the
queue now contains:
[0] /music/a.ogg
[1] /music/b.mp3
[2] /music/c.mid
[3] /music/Y/1.ogg
[4] /music/X/1.ogg
[5] /music/Y/2.ogg
[6] /music/X/2.ogg
[7] /music/Y/3.ogg
[8] /music/X/3.ogg
[9] /music/Y/4.ogg
stagger-merge filelist
Adds the given file list to the queue in an interleaved fashion.
More specifically, the new song queue will consist of a list that
alternates between the items from the given file list and the items
from the existing song queu. For example, if the queue initially
contains:
[0] /music/a.ogg
[1] /music/b.mp3
[2] /music/c.mid
And the /music/Y/ directory contains:
1.ogg 2.ogg 3.ogg 4.ogg
Then, after executing "moosic -o stagger-merge /music/Y", the queue
will contain:
[0] /music/Y/1.ogg
[1] /music/a.ogg
[2] /music/Y/2.ogg
[3] /music/b.mp3
[4] /music/Y/3.ogg
[5] /music/c.mid
[6] /music/Y/4.ogg
interval-add interval filelist
Inserts the given songs into the current song queue with a regular
frequency that is specified with the given interval argument (which
must be an integer).
For example, if the queue initially contains:
[0] /music/a.mod
[1] /music/b.mod
[2] /music/c.mod
[3] /music/d.mod
[4] /music/e.mod
[5] /music/f.mod
[6] /music/g.mod
And the /music/Z directory contains:
aleph.wav bet.wav gimmel.wav
Then, after executing "moosic -o interval-add 3 /music/Z", the
queue will contain:
[0] aleph.wav
[1] /music/a.mod
[2] /music/b.mod
[3] bet.wav
[4] /music/c.mod
[5] /music/d.mod
[6] gimmel.wav
[7] /music/e.mod
[8] /music/f.mod
[9] /music/g.mod
Removing from the song queue
These commands will remove from the queue of items to be played.
cut range
Removes all song queue items that fall within the given range.
del range
An alias for "cut".
crop range
Removes all song queue items that do not fall within the given
range.
remove regex ...
Remove all song queue items that match the given regular
expression. If multiple regular expressions are given, any song
that matches any one of the expressions will be removed.
filter regex ...
Remove all song queue items that do not match the given regular
expression. If multiple regular expressions are given, only those
songs that match all the regular expressions will remain afterward.
clear
Clear the song queue.
wipe
Clear the song queue and stop the current song.
Rearranging the song queue
These commands let you change the order of the items in the queue.
move range index
Moves all items in the given range to a new position in the song
queue. If you want to move items to the end of the queue, use
"`moosic length`" as the final argument. For example, to move the
first 10 songs to the end of the queue, use the following command:
"moosic move 0:10 `moosic length`"
move-pattern regex index
Moves all items that match the given regular expression to a new
position in the song queue.
swap range range
Causes the songs contained within the two specified ranges to trade
places.
reshuffle [range]
Reshuffle the song queue. If a range is specified, only items that
fall within that range will be shuffled.
shuffle [range]
An alias for "reshuffle".
sort [range]
Rearrange the song queue in sorted order. If a range is specified,
only items that fall within that range will be sorted.
reverse [range]
Reverse the order of the song queue. If a range is specified, only
items that fall within that range will be reversed.
partial-sort regex ...
For each specified regular expression, the items in the song queue
that match that expression are removed from the queue and gathered
into their own list. All of these lists (plus the list of items
that did not match any regular expression) are then stitched back
together through simple concatenation. Finally, this unified list
replaces the contents of the song queue.
The items that match a particular regular expression will remain in
the same order with respect to each other. Each group of matched
items will appear in the reordered song queue in the order that the
corresponding regular expressions were specified on the command
line.
stagger regex ...
For each specified regular expression, the items in the song queue
that match that expression are removed from the queue and gathered
into their own list. All of these lists are then merged together
in a staggered fashion. All the leftover items (i.e. the ones that
weren’t matched by any regex on the command line) are appended to
this unified list, which then replaces the contents of the song
queue.
For example, if you use "moosic stagger red blue green" and the
queue originally contains only names that either contain the string
"red" or "blue" or "green", then the members of the reordered queue
will alternate between "red" items, "blue" items, and "green"
items. If the queue does contain items that are neither "red" nor
"green" nor "blue", then these will be collected and placed at the
end of the queue, after all the "red", "green", and "blue" items.
sub pattern replacement [range]
Perform a regular expression substitution on all items in the song
queue. More precisely, this searches each queue item for the
regular expression specified by the first argument, and replaces it
with the text specified by the second argument. Any backslash
escapes in the replacement text will be processed, including
special character translation (e.g. "\n" to newline) and
backreferences to groups within the match. If a range is given,
then the substitution will only be applied to the items that fall
within the range, instead of all items. Only the first matching
occurrence of the pattern is replaced in each item.
suball pattern replacement [range]
This is identical to the "sub" command, except that all occurrences
of the pattern within each queue item are replaced instead of just
the first occurrence.
General management
These commands affect the state of the Moosic server in various ways.
next [number]
Stops the current song (if any), and jumps ahead to a song that is
currently in the queue. The argument specifies the number of songs
to be skipped, including the currently playing song. Its default
value is 1. The skipped songs are recorded in the history as if
they had been played. If queue advancement is disabled, this
command merely stops the current song and removes the appropriate
number of songs from the queue, and does not cause a new song to be
played.
previous [number]
Retreats to a previously played song (from the history list) and
begins playing it if queue advancement is enabled. If a number is
given as an argument, then the music daemon will retreat by that
number of songs. If no argument is given, then the music daemon
will retreat to the most recent song in the history. More
precisely, this command stops the current song (without recording
it in the song history) and returns the most recently played song
or songs to the queue. This command removes songs from the history
when it returns them to the queue, thus modifying the song history.
When loop mode is on, this command retreats into the tail end of
the queue instead of the song history. This produces wrap-around
behavior that you would expect from loop mode, and does not modify
the song history.
prev
An alias for "previous".
goto regex
Jumps to the next song in the queue that matches the given regular
expression.
gobackto regex
Jumps back to the most recent previous song that matches the given
regular expression.
noadvance
Tell the music daemon to stop playing any new songs, but without
interrupting the current song. In other words, this halts queue
advancement.
noadv
An alias for "noadvance".
advance
Tell the music daemon to resume queue advancement (i.e. play new
songs when the current one is finished). Obviously, this has no
effect if queue advancement hasn’t been disabled.
adv An alias for "advance".
toggle-advance
Halts queue advancement if it is enabled, and enables advancement
if it is halted.
stop
Tell the music daemon to stop playing the current song and stop
processing the song queue. The current song is put back into the
song queue and is not recorded in the song history.
pause
Suspend the current song so that it can be resumed at the exact
same point at a later time. Note: this often leaves the sound
device locked.
unpause
Unpause the current song, if the current song is paused, otherwise
do nothing.
play
Tell the music daemon to resume playing. (Use after "stop",
"noadv", or "pause".)
loop
Turn loop mode on. When loop mode is on, songs are returned to the
end of the queue when they finish playing instead of being thrown
away.
noloop
Turn loop mode off.
toggle-loop
Turn loop mode on if it is off, and turn it off if it is on.
reconfigure
Tell the music daemon to reload its configuration file.
reconfig
An alias for "reconfigure".
showconfig
Query and print the music daemon’s filetype associations.
start-server [options]
Start a new instance of the music daemon (also known as moosicd).
If option arguments are given, they will be used as the options for
invoking moosicd. The options that are accepted by moosicd can be
found in its own manual page, moosicd(1).
exit
Tell the music daemon to quit.
quit
An alias for "exit".
die An alias for "exit".
AUDIO CD SUPPORT
If you have the takcd program installed, and you have an appropriate
entry for it in the Moosic server’s player configuration, then you can
play audio CD tracks with Moosic. The following entry should be in
~/.moosic/config:
(?i)^cda://(\S*)
takcd \1
To put CD tracks into the song queue, you should name them with the
prefix "cda://", followed immediately by the number of the track you
wish to play. For example, "moosic -n add cda://3" will add the third
track on the CD to the end of the song queue.
The takcd program can be found at <http://bard.sytes.net/takcd/>.
FILES
socket
This is a socket file which is used to allow Moosic clients to
contact the Moosic server. It is generally located in the
~/.moosic/ directory, unless moosicd was invoked with the
-c/--config option.
SEE ALSO
moosicd(1), for details on invoking the Moosic server by hand.
Various moosic commands accept regular expressions arguments. The
syntax used for these regular expressions is identical to the syntax
used by Python’s regular expression library. The details of this
syntax are explained in the chapter entitled "Regular Expression
Syntax" <http://www.python.org/doc/current/lib/re-syntax.html> from the
section dealing with the re module in the Python Library Reference.
AUTHOR
Daniel Pearson <daniel@nanoo.org>