shell script to search filenames for special characters and replaces them

[whitethorn]

Hi,

I want to write a shell script that'll search through all the filename in a directory and change certain characters with another. I'm wondering if the best way is using regular expressions, or something else. Pretty much what I'm looking for are some examples or ideas which way to go about this.

[HalPomeranz]

I'd use the rename command. For example, here's the command to turn all spaces into underscores:



rename 's/\s+/_/g' *


The rename command uses Perl syntax for the replacement operator (the 's/\s+/_/g' stuff in the command above), so boning up on Perl will help here.

Note that there's a "-n" option you can use to have the command show you what it would do without actually making the change:



$ rename -n 's/\s+/_/g' *
foo bar renamed as foo_bar
$ rename 's/\s+/_/g' *
$ ls
foo_bar


This "try before you buy" approach can be very useful if you're not sure of your Perl expression. Heck, I use "-n" all the time and I've been programming Perl for over 15 years...

[ghostdog74]

if you have rename, then you can give it a try. However without rename you can just as well use common tools available, or even with the shell
1) eg for one directory


for FILES in *.txt
do
newfile=${FILES/abc/def} #change abc to def
mv "$FILES" "$newfile"
done


2) eg for subdirectories, use find


find /mydir -type f -name "*.txt" | while read FILES
do
newfile=${FILES/abc/def} #change abc to def
mv "$FILES" "$newfile"
done

[whitethorn]

Hi, so I've been working on this, and so far I've gotten it to replace almost what I need. The reason I'm doing this is because at my institut they have a dsmc client running the server is at the computer center. Neway at the moment I'm having problems getting it to change these characters

! ? ' (space) / \

Here's my program code : The parts I've greyed out don't work. Ne ideas? Is there a way to use ascii code to identify the different symbols?



#!/bin/bash
find . -iname "*ä*" | while read a then
do
echo "$a"
case $a in
*ä*) mv -f "$a" "${a%ä}ae";;
*Ä*) mv -f "$a" "${a%Ä}AE";;
esac
done

find . -iname "*ö*" | while read b then
do
echo "$b"
case $b in
*ö*) mv -f "$b" "${b%ö}oe";;
*Ö*) mv -f "$b" "${b%Ö}OE";;
esac
done

find . -iname "*ü*" | while read c then
do
echo "$c"
case $c in
*ü*) mv -f "$c" "${c%ü}ue";;
*Ü*) mv -f "$c" "${c%Ü}UE";;
esac
done

#find . -iname "* *" | while read d then
# do
# mv -f "$d" "${d% }_"
# done

find . -iname "*ß*" | while read e then
do
mv -f "$e" "${e%ß}sz"
done

find . -iname "*@*" | while read f then
do
mv -f "$f" "${f%@}(at)"
done

find . -iname *'?'* | while read g then
do
mv -f "$g" "${g%'?'}JKJK"
done

#find . -iname "*'*" | while read h then
# do
# mv -f "$h" "${h%'}."
# done

find . -iname "*!*" | while read i then
do
mv -f "$i" "${i%!}_"
done

#find . -iname "*\*" | while read j then
# do
# mv -f "$j" "${j%\}_"
# done

#find . -iname "*/*" | while read j then
# do
# mv -f "$j" "${j%/}."
# done