Making playlist files compatible with the SanDisk Clip Sport on Linux

Open VLC and make a playlist with the songs you want. Save it as a .m3u file.

Make a copy of that file, and open it in a text editor. Make the following edits:

• Remove all the lines that start with #EXTINF.
• For each remaining line, find-and-replace the path to your music collection folder with \Music. In other words, it should be the actual path to the file on the Clip Sport relative to the root of the Clip Sport's file system, not your local computer's.
• Find-and-replace all instances of %20 with a space.
• Find-and-replace all instances of / with \.

Once you're done, change the end-of-line markers to the Windows version by running:

unix2dos playlist-copy.m3u

Now you can copy the .m3u file to your Clip Sport, and it should be able to read the playlist file properly.