Legacy ImageMagick Discussions Archive

Hi all, using 6.9.2-0 Q16 x64, 2015-08-15, prebuilt Windows binary.

I have any image files:

test_1.png
test_2.png
test_3.png
test_4.png

I execute: This works.
---------------------------
Next I rename files to:

.test_1.png
.test_2.png
.test_3.png
.test_4.png

I execute: This causes the following error:

montage.exe: UnableToOpenBlob `.test_[0-3].png': No such file or directory @ error/blob.c/OpenBlob/2695.
montage.exe: UnableToOpenFile `.test_[0-3].png' @ error/png.c/ReadPNGImage/3913.
montage.exe: MissingAnImageFilename `output.tif' @ error/montage.c/MontageImageCommand/1790.

---------------------------
Next, I execute: This works. I can use this solution for now, but may run into cases where I'll exceed the 8191 cmd prompt character limit

Note: it works if the period is located in the middle of the file name, just not the start.

The brackets at http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/montage/#tile are Unix. I am surprised they work on Window. As listed on that page:

"The strange "[1-5]" syntax is a UNIX shell shorthand, which is expanded into a list of filenames. The "montage" command itself does not see these characters, just the resulting list of files."

Perhaps in Windows syntax, the period at the start of filenames has a special meaning? I am not a Windows user, so I cannot test that properly. But in Unix, you cannot even name a file starting with a period, because a leading period has special meaning.

Does the following work?
or

Removed. Please ignore.

Usually filename expansion is done by shell (or in Windows command processor), but ImageMagick itself expand filename after shell expansion for preparing the case TIFF:foo*.tiff, foo*.psd[0] etc.
The argument list shown by -debug Configure is the one after expansion by ImageMagick. So it is not Windows that expand test_[0-3].png in this case.

You can confirm PNG:.test_*.png failed to expand even in Unix.

And it seems it is intentionally - there is a comment of ExpandFilenames() in utility.c I don't know why, however.

246246 wrote:The argument list shown by -debug Configure is the one after expansion by ImageMagick.

I didn't know that. Thanks for the correction. Testing with other programs shows that Windows does not expand the [0-3] notation, so it must be by ImageMagick.