TV_MERGE(1p)

💖 TV_MERGE 💖

okay so bestie, welcome to tv_merge — it lives in the User Contributed Perl Documentation section (1p), and it's literally the glow-up your XMLTV files have been waiting for. ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

tv_merge — merge (combine) two XMLTV files. that's it, that's the whole vibe. 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

tv_merge [-t] -i FILE -m FILE -o FILE

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so what we're doing here is reading XMLTV listings from two files and merging them together. 🫶

and no, this is not the same as tv_cat — tv_cat just joins files like a lazy group project where nobody talks to each other. tv_merge actually updates the original XMLTV file (add / replace / delete, the whole main-character arc 💅) using the channels and programmes it finds in that second file.

it handles multiple channels like a boss 👑, and it will insert any new programmes and delete any overlapping ones. lowkey obsessed with how thorough that is.

IMPORTANT 🚨 the input files must be pre-sorted into datetime within channel order, and you do that with the --by-channel option on tv_sort:

tv_sort --by-channel --output FILE FILE

all programmes must have start and stop times, no exceptions, fr fr. ⏰

(also, quick note bestie: programmes in the merged-in file replace any in the master file — i.e. data are not updated within programmes. so don't come for me when the insides of a programme don't get touched. 🙈)

this program uses XML::TreePP, which doesn't write <DOCTYPE> definitions in the output file. so if you need to add a suitable <DOCTYPE> tag, use the optional -t parameter:

tv_merge -t -i FILE -m FILE -o FILE

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🌈 EXAMPLE 🌈

say you wanna merge all channels/programmes in newadditions.xml into master.xml, and write the output to newmaster.xml with a DOCTYPE tag. iconic. do this:

tv_merge -t -i master.xml -m newadditions.xml -o newmaster.xml

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💜 SEE ALSO 💜

• tv_sort(1)
• XMLTV(3)

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Copyright Geoff Westcott, February 2013.

this code is distributed under the GNU General Public License v2 (GPLv2). slay, legally. 💅

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and that's the tea, bestie — go merge those files. this page was served fresh by perl v5.40.1 on 2025-04-19 (the TV_MERGE(1p) energy we all know and love). mwah. 🍓💖