Rule not triggering...I know I'm doing something wrong

Hi all,

I have Hazel set to watch my Downloads folder. When it finds a file name with a "/" in it, a rule is meant to be triggered to run an Automator workflow that changes that "/" to a "-".

Trouble is, this doesn't happen automatically.

If a file enters my downloads folder with a "/" in it, the rule is not triggered. But, when I open Hazel, click on the rule in question, and say "Run rules now", it will work. This tells me that the Automator workflow does work.

I'm convinced I've got something set incorrectly, but can't figure out what.

Cheers for any help -

chatoyer

Try to move the file out and back into the downloads folder and see what happens.
I realized that it only works when it detects a "new" file in the folder.

Hey, that worked. Thanks much!

Although I'm left wondering whether this is a positive revelation about my workflow.

If I'm downloading stuff (mostly pdf) and those downloads have a "/" in the file name, am I stuck moving the file in and out of my Downloads folder just so Hazel registers it? If that's the case, I might as well just rename the file myself to do what I'm technically asking Hazel to do.

Hmmm.........

No I don't think so. Once a new file is downloaded once Hazel is running (started), it should pick up any new files that it hasn't seen before/run the rule on.
So if you download a PDF to your downloads, it should rename it.

It shouldn't require you re-adding it like that. Check the troubleshooting thread at the top of the forum to see where things are going wrong.

Also, keep in mind that "/" is a special character. It gets confusing but at the lower POSIX/UNIX level, slashes are used to denote components of a path (i.e. subfolders). In the Finder, though, it's a colon (:) character instead so there's this translation back and forth between the two characters. Hazel tries to be consistent with Finder in the interface but if you drop to a lower level (like doing a shell script), you'll find that you'll have to switch.