List of filenames as argument for mplayer => mplayer doesn't recognize the filenames

Question

i want to play some music files with mplayer randomly. I don't want to switch the player for that, i want to understand what's wrong here.

ThePandaTooth $ ls
file_1.ogg
file_2.ogg
file_3.ogg

I know, the output of ls | sort -R results in a randomized output of filenames. But I can't play them, with the odd reason, it can't find the file. The sorting is irrelevant here.

ThePandaTooth $ mplayer $(ls | sort -R)
Playing file_1.ogg.
Cannot open file 'file_1.ogg': No such file or directory
Failed to open file_1.ogg

Playing file_2.ogg.
Cannot open file 'file_2.ogg': No such file or directory
Failed to open file_2.ogg

EDIT: Mplaying the files with mplayer * works of course.

Answer 1

It is very likely that the problem is that you have defined an alias in one of *rc files:

alias ls='ls --color=always'

In such case color codes survive pipe lines and mplayer gets filenames surrounded by those codes. You can pass the output of command substitution $() to printf to see what mplayer really receives, e.g.

printf '%q\n' $(ls | sort -R)

You would see something like

$'\E[01;35mFile_1.ogg\E[0m'
$'\E[01;35mFile_2.ogg\E[0m'
$'\E[01;35mFile_3.ogg\E[0m'

Obviously mplayer reports correctly 'No such file or directory', and prints full problematic file names including the escape codes, but the shell once again interpret these codes as a color, so you only see names in the output what can be confusing.

To pass filenames correctly just run \ls or command ls or even start new shell with bash -f, so that bash won't use an alias but native command

$ printf '%q\n' $(\ls | sort -R)
File_1.ogg
File_2.ogg
File_3.ogg

Answer 2

I really don't think you should be involving ls or sort at all here. If you want to play the files in a random order, just use the -shuffle option:

mplayer -shuffle *