I'm using bashpodder.shell for my podcast client. I run it directly from
the usb2-connect hard drive in my iriver hp140 player. Usually I plug
the usb cable into the iriver and run bashpodder manually while I'm
getting ready to leave the house. Sometimes I need abort the bashpoder
process with a control-c if it is time to leave before all the podcasts
are downloaded.

I've made a number of tweaks that make it more useful for me.The changes
can be turned on by setting variables at the beginning of the script, or
by calling bashpodder with certain parameters. The default behaviors
of the script have not changed, AFAIK.

Verbose mode: (-v --verbose)
I always run bashpodder manually from the shell and I like to see how it
is progressing, so I added a number of echo statements. Verbose mode
also turns off the "quiet" option in wget, so I can see how the current
file download is progressing.

wget continue option:
I often want to stop the download process before it completes, so I
added the -c flag to wget. With wget_continue, any aborted download
starts where it left off the last time bashpodder ran.

--catchup_all:
This option writes all urls to the log file without downloading the
actual podcasts. This is useful if you want to subscribe to some
podcasts but don't want to download all the back issues. You can edit
the podcast.log file afterwards to delete any url you still wish to
download next time bashpodder is run.

--first_only:
This option grabs only the first enclosed file found in each rss feed.
The --catchup_all flag won't work with this option. If you want to
download the first file and also permanently ignore the older files, run
bashpodder with this option, and then run it again with --catchup_all.

-u, --url_list
The urls in bp.conf are ignored. The url(s) provided on the command line
are fetched instead. The urls should point to rss feeds. If used, this
needs to be the last option on the command line. This can be used to
quickly download just a favorite podcast, or to take a few new podcasts
for a trial spin.

m3u sorting:
added -1rc flag to the ls command, so the m3u list has the same order
as the urls in bp.conf

convert m3u to dos line endings:
my iriver only can use m3u's formated with msdos-style line endings, so
I made an option to convert the unix-style bashpodder m3u file to
dos-style line endings using unix2dos.

unique m3u filenames:
My player was showing the same name for all the m3u files, so I added
the date string to the m3u filename.

Usage message:
Running with -h or --help flags now shows usage notes

Bittorrent: (--bittorrent)
Option to run bittorrent on any .torrent files. Probably best only used
with verbose mode.

Sync disk:  (--sync_disks)
Option to run the unix sync command twice to flush any cached date to
the drives. This lessens the chance of corrupting the drive on my player
when I unplug the usb cable.

Brian Hefferan