merge README

merge is a Perl script that merges Netscape bookmark files (commonly named Bookmarks.html or Bookmarks.htm) and/or Internet Explorer "Favorites" (often called Favorites.htm or Favorites.html). I wrote this originally because I use several computers regularly and manually keeping a consistent bookmark file between them is difficult and tedius.

Obtaining merge

What merge Does

• Merges Netscape and/or IE bookmark files.

What merge Doesn't Do Now, But May Do Later

• Check links for validity.

Usage

Any combination of bookmark files is okay. NS->NS, NS->IE, IE->NS, IE->IE merges are all okay. The output type will be the same as the master type. Only URLs are compared; if they match, only the master copy is kept. The directory structure is normally kept intact, but can be sorted alphabetically with the -s flag. The resulting bookmarkfile is printed to stdout, so you'll want to redirect it to a file.

Change Log

merge-0.3

• IE bookmark files now work! (for those versions of IE that use bookmark files instead of a directory structure).
• Added the new command line stuff.
• Pipe symbols '|' are now turned into '!' before processing the bookmark file.
• The output spacing is a little more accurate (the browser doesn't really care, but I do :).

merge-0.2

• Got rid of some dumb parentheses in parseLinks().
• Added better URL comparing with the URL_equal() function. This should fix bug #113467. I don't think [http://foo.com] and [http://foo.com/index.html] should be the same anymore...PHP and other dynamic stuff has changed this. http://linuxtoday.com is a good example of this.
• printTree() now uses the current time for all the time-related stuff in the links. This should take care of bug #113469.

merge-0.1

• First release

Bugs/Issues

• You shouldn't have the "|" symbol (the pipe symbol) anywhere in any of the input bookmark files. If you do, merge will change it to a "!"
• [http://foo.com] will not match [http://foo.com/index.html] in any cases. This isn't a bug.
• merge does not preserve dates, descriptions, subscriptions, or anything else for bookmarks. I'm not sure that anyone cares anyway.
• merge is written in Perl, so you have to have a Perl interpreter. Perl is standard on most if not all UNIX-like operating systems, and there are Windows and Mac ports as well.
• On a related note, perl is expected to be in /usr/bin. You must change this if it is not there. Just set the first line of merge to your path to perl, or just run merge as an argument to the Perl interpreter. For the latter case, the command line would be:
  > perl merge -m[NS,IE] master-bookmarks.html -s[NS,IE] slave-bookmarks.html

License

merge uses the GPL. Please see the License.txt file that should have come with this package or: http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html for a copy of the license.

Feedback

Feedback should be sent to buchmann@cs.unr.edu. I am mostly interested in bugs/platform issues, but any improvements or new features will be welcomed.