Bash script help

[mark1969]

I am trying to write a script to delete any characters from file names that are not recognized by a FAT file system i.e.\ / : * ? " < > | so they can be copied to an external media player. I have written basic programs before using BBC basic but that was about 25 years ago and thought i would try again. I'm not sure how to approach this problem and would be grateful for any advise given. Thanks for taking the time to read this

[ghostdog74]

assuming your current directory only contains files.


#!/bin/bash
ls | awk 'BEGIN{q="\047"}
/[\/:*?"<>|]/{
oldfile=$0
gsub(/[\/:*?"<>|]/,"")
cmd="mv "q oldfile q" "q $0 q
print cmd
#system(cmd) #uncomment to use
}'

[WW]

How did you get file names with these characters in them? Do you really have files that have a forward slash / in the file name?

The command
rename 's/[\/\\:*?"<>|]//g' list_of_files can do this. For example:


$ touch '<file>' '|ugly|name|.dat' '\\\V.dat' '?*"what:now'
$ ls
<file> ?*"what:now \\\V.dat |ugly|name|.dat
$ rename 's/[\/\\:*?"<>|]//g' *
$ ls
V.dat file uglyname.dat whatnow
$

[mark1969]

thank you both. that's great to get me started