podcast_downloader: read RSS feeds and get podcast episodes

This AWK program reads from standard input or from one or more files. This input specifies the settings and the URLs of the RSS feeds to read. After reading the RSS feeds and getting episodes, the program writes the updated information to standard output. If you redirect the output to a file, you can use it for future input.

The program can use curl or wget to download files.

Download

Download a compressed archive file:

• Files in a .tar.lz file
• Files in a .tar.gz file
• Files in a .zip file

Unpack

Unpack the archive file. For example:

• To unpack podcast_downloader.tar.lz: tar -xf podcast_downloader.tar.lz
• To unpack podcast_downloader.tar.gz: tar -xf podcast_downloader.tar.gz
• To unpack podcast_downloader.zip: unzip -q podcast_downloader.zip

Example

Suppose that:

• The file podcast_downloader.awk contains the AWK program.
• The file podcasts.txt contains the podcast information.

To:

• Run the program and write the updated podcast information to the file podcasts.txt.new.
• If the program ends successfully, replace the original podcast information file with the new podcast information file.

awk -f podcast_downloader.awk -- podcasts.txt > podcasts.txt.new && mv podcasts.txt.new podcasts.txt

The compressed archives contain a shell script that does something similar.