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ExifTool => The "exiftool" Application => Topic started by: GuzmanR on January 25, 2025, 07:50:32 AM

Title: Export metadata to a CSV file of the files contained in a .TXT file
Post by: GuzmanR on January 25, 2025, 07:50:32 AM
Hi,

The .TXT file has a line with the absolute PATH of each of the files, for example:
   /snap/cups/1067/share/cups/data/form_english.pdf
   /snap/cups/current/share/cups/data/default-testpage.pdf
   /snap/cups/current/share/cups/data/confidential.pdf
   ...
The .TXT file can contain several million lines.

The process consists of generating a CSV file with the metadata of each of the files indicated in the .TXT file.

How can I do this?
Title: Re: Export metadata to a CSV file of the files contained in a .TXT file
Post by: Phil Harvey on January 25, 2025, 08:29:37 AM
You can't use ExifTool to generate a CSV file this large with the -csv option.  CSV is very inefficient for this because a large number of columns will be mostly empty.  I suggest using JSON format instead

exiftool -@ files.txt -j > out.json

- Phil
Title: Re: Export metadata to a CSV file of the files contained in a .TXT file
Post by: StarGeek on January 25, 2025, 10:20:16 AM
From the docs on the -csv option (https://exiftool.org/exiftool_pod.html#csv-CSVFILE)
QuoteNote that this option is fundamentally different than all other output format options because it requires information from all input files to be buffered in memory before the output is written. This may result in excessive memory usage when processing a very large number of files with a single command.
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