createcats - Man Page

createcats [Options] /path_to/epg.data

This tool is delivered with the EPGSearch plugin and should exist in the plugin's source directory after compilation. It helps creating the file epgsearchcats.conf from the VDR's EPG data if the samples in the directory conf won't fit the needs.

When called with:

    createcats /path_to/epg.data

createcats takes the VDR's file epg.data as argument and scans it for suitable EPG information. Such information is a tuple of category name and a corresponding value, like Genre: Movie, located at the beginning of a line. Line breaks within epg.data are encoded by | characters.

The output is a file epgsearchcats.conf that should be copied to the plugin's configuration directory. Before productive use, some customizing may be necessary, because not all findings in the file will be suitable as extended EPG information.

The full set of arguments comprises:

-h,  --help

Print a concise help.

-l N, --maxlength=N

The maximum length of a text to be accepted as a category value.

If the length of a value is greater than N, this value will not become part of the list of values.

-m N, --minappearance=N

The minimum number of occurrences for a category be accepted.

The tool counts how often a category is used in the current EPG data. If this is less than N, this category will not become part of the resulting epgsearchcats.conf.

-v N, --maxvalues=N

Values of a category are omitted if they exceed this number.

If the number of distinct values for a category is greater than N, no list of values will be created for this category. As a consequence, the category will be represented by a string item that can be filled with arbitrary text. Otherwise, the category will be represented by a menu item for selecting values from the category's list.

Hint: Results are best if the current EPG data is as large as possible. When downloading EPG data from an external EPG provider, the EPG should be updated before running createcats.

Originally provided by Mike Constabel <epgsearch (at) constabel (dot) net>.

Revised and adapted to recent plugin features by the current maintainers.

The plugin is maintained as GitHub project:

<https://github.com/vdr-projects/vdr-plugin-epgsearch/>

Issues can be reported, and features be suggested, through the project's bug tracker:

<https://github.com/vdr-projects/vdr-plugin-epgsearch/issues/>

Copyright (C) 2004-2010 Christian Wieninger

Copyright © 2011-2025 TomJoad (VDR-Portal), et al.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Or, point your browser to <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html>

The original author can be reached via cwieninger@gmx.de.

Current maintainers can be reached via the project's GitHub site (see above).

The MD5 code has been derived from the MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm of RSA Data Security, Inc.

epgsearch(1), epgsearch(4), epgsearchcats.conf(5)

epgsearch(1), epgsearchcats.conf(5).