Simple Linux bash shell script to create "romlist.txt" for RetroHQ Lynx SD Cartridge

[billkendrick]

So I've got 3 Lynxes now, while I've now got two of the new RetroHQ Lynx GameDrives, I also still have the original Lynx SD Cart.  It works a bit differently, and I'm finally setting it up 'nicely' for my family to hopefully enjoy some 3-player games with me.

 

I finally noticed the "romlist.txt" feature in the new menu update that came out last year (see https://atarigamer.com/articles/introducing-lynx-sd-menu-loader-version-2), and decided I'd take advantage of it.  Seeing "FOOBAR~1.LNX" on the screen was a bit annoying and confusing and reminded me of the horrible days when I was using Windows in the late 1990s.

 

But rather than just sit down and create some those text files by hand (and have to update them by hand whenever I add new games, or shuffle/organize ROMs into subdirectories), I created a little Bash shell script for Linux that can create such a file, given a list of ".lnx" files on the command-line.

 

Usage would be something like "/path/to/make_romlist.sh *.lnx > romlist.txt"

 

It's not going to be perfect, but I struggled to find any kind of tool to help with this process.  The closest I found was "mshortname" from "mtools", but it's really focused on reading a floppy disk (A: drive aka /dev/fd0 ?).  For example, my regular expressions for valid characters may be off.  And while most disallowed characters convert to "_", spaces just go away. (So "Super Offroad.lnx" must become "SUPERO~1.LNX", not "SUPER ~1.LNX".)  And it assumes there'll be no clashes (how would we even figure which is which!?), e.g., "FILENA~1.LNX" vs "FILENA~2.LNX".

 

So, YMMV. Feel free to improve it, and post your updates to this thread!

 

Here's example output when I ran it on a directory of LNX files:

kendrick@gambit:~/Lynx/sdcard_files_20201127$ rm romlist.txt ; ../make_romlist.sh *.lnx > romlist.txt 
rm: remove regular file 'romlist.txt'? y
Shortening 'Assembloids' to 'Assemb~1'

Shortening 'BattleZone2000' to 'Battle~1'

Ignoring 'BlockOut'; it's already short...

Cleaning 'Electrocop (USA, Europe)' to 'Electrocop_USA_Europe_'...
...shortening to 'Electr~1'

Shortening 'GrowingTies' to 'Growin~1'

Cleaning 'Hard Drivin' (USA, Europe)' to 'HardDrivin'_USA_Europe_'...
...shortening to 'HardDr~1'

Cleaning 'Lemmings (USA, Europe)' to 'Lemmings_USA_Europe_'...
...shortening to 'Lemmin~1'

Shortening 'SuperMissileCommand' to 'SuperM~1'

kendrick@gambit:~/Lynx/sdcard_files_20201127$ cat romlist.txt 
[Assemb~1.lnx]Assembloids
[Battle~1.lnx]BattleZone2000
[Electr~1.lnx]Electrocop (USA, Europe)
[Growin~1.lnx]GrowingTies
[HardDr~1.lnx]Hard Drivin' (USA, Europe)
[Lemmin~1.lnx]Lemmings (USA, Europe)
[SuperM~1.lnx]SuperMissileCommand

 

And here's the script itself:

#!/bin/bash

# make_romlist.sh
#
# Output content you can place in a 'romlist.txt' file on
# an SD card used in a RetroHQ Lynx SD Cartridge (original
# model, using new Lynx SD Menu 2, from March 2019; see
# https://atarigamer.com/articles/introducing-lynx-sd-menu-loader-version-2)
#
# By Bill Kendrick <bill@newbreedsoftware.com>
# 2020-11-27 - 2020-11-27
#
# As seen in the README.md for Lynx SD Menu 2
# (the a menu system for loading Atari Lynx ROMs via the Lynx SD Cartridge.
# Redesigned and updated by Atari Gamer.):
#
#   [...]
#   By placing a file called romlist.txt in a directory you can specify long ROM
#   names for each of the 8.3 DOS file names. An example file is like so... 
#   [gateszen.lnx]Gates of Zendocon
#   [alien.lnx]Alien vs Predator
#   [apb.lnx]All Points Bulletin
#   [awegolf.lnx]Awesome Golf
#
#   Note that the short DOS (8.3) file name is in square brackets, followed by the long
#   ROM name. Maximum length for a ROM name is 45 characters. 
#   The DOS (8.3) names could be in the form romnam~1.lnx. [...]

OIFS="$IFS"
IFS='|'

vfat="A-Za-z0-9_'-"

for lfn in $@; do
  base=`basename $lfn .lnx`
  len=${#base}
  if [[ $base =~ ^[$vfat]+$ ]]; then
    if [ $len -gt 8 ]; then
      sfn=${base:0:6}~1
      echo "Shortening '$base' to '$sfn'" 1>&2
      echo "[$sfn.lnx]$base"
    else
      echo "Ignoring '$base'; it's already short..." 1>&2
    fi
  else
    clean=`echo "$base" | tr -d " " | sed -e "s/[^$vfat]/_/g"`
    echo "Cleaning '$base' to '$clean'..." 1>&2
    sfn=${clean:0:6}~1
    echo "...shortening to '$sfn'" 1>&2
    echo "[$sfn.lnx]$base"
  fi
  echo 1>&2
done

IFS="$OIFS"

Enjoy!

[PFG 9000]

Very cool!  It is a pain to generate and update the rom list file thingey, and I've wondered myself what it would take to generate something like this.  However, I'm still mostly computer illiterate, so I wouldn't have the slightest clue how to use this.  But I'm sure plenty of others will benefit from it.