Renaming multiple files using wildcards?

[stretch4]

Ok, so I have a list of Intellivision rom files like this:


...
Commando (1987).int
Congo Bongo (Sega).int
Deep Pockets-Super Pro Pool and Billiards (1990) (Realtime) [!].int
Defender (Atarisoft).int
Demon Attack (Imagic) [!].int
Dig Dug (1987) (Intv Corp).int
Diner (1987) (Intv Corp).int
Donkey Kong (Coleco).int
Donkey Kong Jr (Coleco).int
Dracula (Imagic) [!].int
Dragonfire (Imagic) [!].int
...


I would like to remove anything that's in parenthesis, resulting in a list like this:


...
Commando.int
Congo Bongo.int
Deep Pockets-Super Pro Pool and Billiards [!].int
Defender.int
Demon Attack [!].int
Dig Dug.int
Diner.int
Donkey Kong.int
Donkey Kong Jr.int
Dracula [!].int
Dragonfire [!].int
...


I've tried using pyRenamer and GPRename, but neither one seems to be able to do it. I imagine this could be done with the rename command, but I don't understand perl expressions. This is what I tried with rename, but it didn't work...


rename -vn 's/^(*)//' *.int

rename -vn 's/\(*)//' *.int

I would prefer a GUI solution, but the terminal would be ok.

[steeldriver]

You basically got it - just a couple of things



you're confusing shell globbing (where * means anything) and regex where it just means zero or more of the previous 'atom' - you need .* to mean zero or more (*) of any single character (.)



you need to escape both parentheses \( and \) to stop them from being treated as grouping markers
you probably want to strip either the leading or trailing space else you will end up with things like 'Diner .int' instead of 'Diner.int'




rename -nv 's/\s*\(.*\)//' *.int

[stretch4]

you're confusing shell globbing (where * means anything) and regex where it just means zero or more of the previous 'atom' - you need .* to mean zero or more (*) of any single character (.)
So...let me see if I got this straight.

* means zero or more of the previous atom. What's an atom?
I don't understand what you mean by "you need .* to mean zero or more (*) of any single character. (.)" Could you elaborate?
Using a \ to escape the parenthesis is simple enough.


If you could point me to a good website to learn this stuff, that would be much appreciated.



rename -nv 's/\s*\(.*\)//' *.int
This one worked. Thank you.

[Vaphell]

* means zero or more of the previous atom. What's an atom?


atom would be anything that answers the "what?" question
. any char
\. a literal dot
X a character X
[abc] character belonging to a defined subset
\s \w \d character belonging to abstract classes like any whitespace or "word chars" or digits
(abc[XYZ]) a parenthesized group treated as a single entity

in regular expressions these atoms are optionally followed by modifiers describing quantity. By default if you put X it means exactly one X, whatever that X would be.

<"atom"><optional modifier describing quantity>

modifiers defining quantity are as follows
* 0 or more
+ 1 or more
? 0 or 1
{n} - exactly n times
{n,m} - between n and m times

if you want to construct a pattern for "sequence of any length of whatever chars" you take any char . and multiply it by *, thus yielding the .* pattern

at least 2 digits followed optionally by a lowercase letter?
[0-9][0-9][0-9]*[a-z]?
\d{2,}[a-z]?
or any other combination logically having the same meaning.


Chars . * + ? {}[]() | having regex meaning means that in order to use them in literal sense you need to "hide" them by escaping with \ or by burying them inside [ ] (regex sees subset of chars)

[stretch4]

Thank you Vaphell! Very helpful. I'll be saving this post to refer back to. I wash that info was in rename's man page.

[Vaphell]

regular expressions are used everywhere so it doesn't make much sense to put their rules in a manuals of tools utilizing them. That would be a lot of redundancy. Manuals just assume that you reference the regex docs for the actual pattern building.

google 'regular expressions' and you are golden. There are many websites covering them, there are also regex testers and builders available.