make-car-usb.py

# make-car-usb.py

# Quick little utility to copy files to a USB stick in alphabetical
# order.  Necessary because the genius programmers at Honda decided
# the stereo would read the folders and files not in alphabetical
# order, but in the order they were *written* to the stick.  So this
# just works around that by putting things on there one after another
# in correct alphabetical order.

# By Powered Descent of the Something Awful forums, 2018-11-23

# Written on a Linux box but pretty much all you should need to do to
# adapt to another platform is change the source and destination
# locations, and if necessary changing the slashes to backslashes
# in the very last line.

# To use, arrange the folders and files you want to end up on the USB
# in a folder somewhere and set the "source" variable below to that
# folder, then set the "destination" to wherever the USB drive is.
# IMPORTANT: This script will only go one folder deep below the "source",
# since my car only understands one layer of folders!  Any folders deeper
# than that will be skipped.

import os
from shutil import copyfile, rmtree

# Note the necessary trailing slashes!
source="/home/[username]/Desktop/MusicForCar/"
destination="/media/[username]/CARMUSIC/"

# Get the okay from the user to blow stuff away.
goforlaunch = raw_input("WARNING!  This operation will erase everything in " + destination + "!  Proceed (y/N): ")
if (len(goforlaunch) == 0 or goforlaunch.lower()[0] != "y"):
    print("Aborting.")
    exit(1)

# Clear out the destination.  (Python doesn't seem to have a built-in
# easy way to recursively delete the contents of a folder but not the
# folder itself...)
stufftodelete = os.listdir(destination)
for doomedthing in stufftodelete:
    if (os.path.isdir(destination + doomedthing)):
        rmtree (destination + doomedthing)
    elif (os.path.isfile(destination + doomedthing)):
        os.remove(destination + doomedthing)
    else:
        # A link or a mount or something weird.  Whatever, leave it alone.
        pass

# On to the actual point.  Make directories and copy files one-by-one
# in the correct order.
folderlist = os.listdir(source)
folderlist = sorted(folderlist, key=lambda s: s.lower()) # Case-insensitive sort
for folder in folderlist:
    print folder
    os.mkdir(destination + folder)
    filelist = os.listdir(source + folder)
    filelist = sorted(filelist, key=lambda s: s.lower()) # Case-insensitive sort
    for filename in filelist:
        print folder + '/' + filename
        copyfile(source + folder + '/' + filename, destination + folder + '/' + filename)
# That's all, folks!