v2.1 Mongeville

The primary enhancement is providing a way to skip episode processing for shows with a large number of episodes where cast & crew aren't relevant. See skipEpisodes.example for a more detailed explanation.

One example: "Nova" on PBS has broadcast over 900 episodes since its debut in 1974. Without this feature, generateXrefData would process the cast list from all 900 episodes -- greatly increasing the size of a number of spreadsheets by including much unwanted data.

As of 2.0, all shellscripts pass shellcheck, and all awk scripts pass prettier-plugin-awk.

I name releases after my favorite characters in TV and Movies.

For release 2 it's the French former investigating judge Antoine Mongeville, played by famed French character actor Francis Perrin.

Mongeville is gruff but brilliant. His sharp mind is constantly at work, piecing together obscure motives and skewering false alibis. He often solves mysteries while he's enjoying ornithology and photography. Check out the trailer.

v1.0 Montalbano

I've been testing for weeks and only done a few minor tweaks. IMDb_xref is solid enough to merit a 1.0 release.

I decided to name releases after my favorite characters in TV and Movies.

Number one on my list is Sicilian Detective Salvo Montalbano, played for over 20 years by the enchanting Luca Zingaretti. Montalbano is a mixture of humor and pathos, strength and vulnerability, sophistication and simplicity, reasoning and emotion. He likes to eat well. A pleasure to watch.

Release 1.0 candidate 2

User experience improvements, including the ability to back out of menu selections that previously only had control-c as an exit.

Release 1.0 candidate 1

I've updated the README to reflect the menu-driven approach, tested this version on both macOS & Linux. No known issues.

I'll let it marinate a few days to see if I can come up with any useful updates.

Switch to menus

To reduce the amount of typing required, and to make it simpler to go between searching for shows and searching for cast & crew, I switched to a menu driven model. Just run ./startUp.sh (or on a Mac, right click or double click on startUp.sh).

Improved formatting

Switched most scripts to use tsvPrint

Better user experience

Easier to use
Now when you are asked to pick from alternatives, a url is included to make it easier to investigate:

I found 4 shows titled "Fargo"
1) imdb.com/title/tt0116282	movie	Fargo	Fargo	1996
2) imdb.com/title/tt0044603	movie	Fargo	Fargo	1952
3) imdb.com/title/tt0382026	tvMovie	Fargo	Fargo	2003
4) imdb.com/title/tt2802850	tvSeries	Fargo	Fargo	2014

More robust
I have always used shfmt to ensure my code was syntacticly correct. Now I'm also using shellcheck to follow best practices and make the code more bulletproof.

I've tested this release a lot, but had to overrule a few shellcheck suggestions. There is a small chance I've overlooked a bug.

Fixes for some BSD systems

Fixed other portability issues with sed.

Add findPeopleInShows

There are now two commands that search all of IMDb data, not just the shows added to your favorite shows.
findPeopleInShows.sh and findShowsWith.sh

All programs that used to require a show name or person name as a parameter will now prompt if no parameters are entered.

Parameters still work if you prefer, but the prompted version doesn't require quotes around parameters with spaces.

Remaining work is primarily completely revising the README to focus on prompted and menu driven driven user experience.

Allow user to set prefs for handling [y/n] questions

Select whether a carriage return is required or just hitting y or n with no carriage return.