ExifTool Forum

ExifTool => Newbies => Topic started by: JonAgain on October 15, 2021, 05:54:25 PM

Title: Different Results in Windows VS MacOS
Post by: JonAgain on October 15, 2021, 05:54:25 PM
Hello All,

New here and new to the tool so please bare with me.  I have been learning the tool and really appreciate what it will do for our organization.  However I have ran into a few snags and could use some help.  My goal is to identify bloated DocumentAncestorData, export the results to a file.  Once the files have been identified I am them wiping the AncestorData.  So far so good. 

Everything was going fine running the tool from a Windows Server until I ran into an "Out of Memory" error.  I am guessing that there is just too much AncestorData in one of the files for the tool to read.  So I thought I would try my luck running the same command (modified for MacOS) from a Macbook.  I get two completely different results.  Please see the commands and results below.  I have removed the -q and -m switches to hopefully find any errors along the way.  Note that on Windows I can output a CSV file which properly identifies bloated files, on Mac the file is created but empty.

MacOS
exiftool  -p "$directory/$filename" -r -if "$documentancestors and (()=$documentancestors =~ /, /g) > 100" "/Volumes/Users/Frank/test" > /Users/portfolio/Desktop/test.csv
    1 directories scanned
    4 files failed condition
    0 image files read

Windows
exiftool.exe -p "$directory/$filename" -r -if "$documentancestors and (()=$documentancestors =~ /, /g) > 100" "\\Server\Users\Frank\test" > c:\temp\franktest2.csv
Warning: [Minor] Extracted only 1000 photoshop:DocumentAncestors items. Ignore minor errors to extract all - //Server/Users/Frank/test/Figure-350x350.psd
Warning: [Minor] Extracted only 1000 photoshop:DocumentAncestors items. Ignore minor errors to extract all - //Server/Users/Frank/test/Figure-990x180.psd
Warning: [Minor] Extracted only 1000 photoshop:DocumentAncestors items. Ignore minor errors to extract all - //Server/Users/Frank/test/Figure-ContestMain.psd
Warning: [Minor] Extracted only 1000 photoshop:DocumentAncestors items. Ignore minor errors to extract all - //Server/Users/Frank/test/Figure-Twitter700x700.psd
    1 directories scanned
    4 image files read
Title: Re: Different Results in Windows VS MacOS
Post by: StarGeek on October 15, 2021, 06:08:52 PM
On Mac/Linux/Windows PS, you must swap single/double quotes in order to prevent the shell from interpreting the dollar sign as the start of a shell variable instead of a exiftool tag name. So use this instead
exiftool -p '$directory/$filename' -r -if '$documentancestors and (()=$documentancestors =~ /, /g) > 100' '/Volumes/Users/Frank/test' >/Users/portfolio/Desktop/test.csv

Also, as an alternative on Windows, you can try Oliver Betz alternative Windows Exiftool (https://oliverbetz.de/pages/Artikel/ExifTool-for-Windows) or you could use the pure Perl code if you have Perl installed.  Both have less memory problems than the normal Windows executable.
Title: Re: Different Results in Windows VS MacOS
Post by: JonAgain on October 15, 2021, 06:46:57 PM
Well what do you know, it worked!!!!  Also no Out of Memory errors.

Thank you so much for your help, much appreciated!

Regards

Jon