createcats(1)

📦
version 2.4.6 · 8 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

🌸 createcats(1) — okay so you wanna make epgsearchcats.conf from your VDR's EPG data 💅

bestie, welcome to createcats(1), shipped with the EPGSearch plugin, version 2.4.6 ✨ it's a lil tool that lives in the plugin's source directory after you compile, and it's here to help you build the file epgsearchcats.conf out of your VDR's EPG data — specifically for when the samples chilling in the conf directory just don't fit what you need 🎀

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

createcats [OPTIONS] /path_to/epg.data

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So this tool comes with the EPGSearch plugin and should exist in the plugin's source directory after compilation, no cap. Its whole job? Help you create the file epgsearchcats.conf from the VDR's EPG data when the samples in the conf directory won't fit your needs 🫶

When you call it like this:

createcats /path_to/epg.data

createcats takes the VDR's file epg.data as its argument and scans it for suitable EPG info 🔍 and "suitable EPG info" means a tuple of a category name and its corresponding value — think 'Genre: Movie' — sitting at the beginning of a line. Line breaks inside epg.data are encoded by | characters, iykyk.

The output is a file called epgsearchcats.conf that you should copy over to the plugin's configuration directory 📁. And listen — before you put this into productive use, some customizing may be necessary, because not every finding in that file will be suitable as extended EPG information. Literally not all of it slays, some of it needs a glow-up 🙈

🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

The full set of arguments comprises:

  • -h, --help — print a concise help. that's it, that's the vibe 💅
  • -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. too long? not invited to the party 🚫

  • -m N, --minappearance=N — the minimum number of occurrences for a category to be accepted.

The tool counts how often a category is used in the current EPG data. If that count is less than N, this category will not become part of the resulting epgsearchcats.conf. lowkey gotta show up enough times to be taken seriously ✨

  • -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 that category 🫠. As a consequence, the category will be represented by a string item that can be filled with arbitrary text. Otherwise, the category gets represented by a menu item for selecting values from the category's list. iconic behavior honestly.

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. fr fr, feed it a big meal 🍓

👑 AUTHORS (man pages) 👑

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

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

🌈 PROJECT SITE 🌈

The plugin is maintained as a GitHub project:

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

💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

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

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

go off, tell them what's broken 🐛

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. 🔐

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

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

okay that's the whole page bestie, go forth and categorize 💜

sign-off era: this page was rendered by perl v5.40.1 and dated 2026-04-19 — and that's the createcats(1) of it 🦋✨

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