How to search and replace file name characters

[Vaphell]

wth? o.O

inside the loop what happens can be reduced to this:

$ fd='/media/newest3TB/0 test/JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
$ p=${fd%/*}
$ n=${fd##*/}
$ echo "p: '$p'"
p: '/media/newest3TB/0 test'
$ echo "n: '$n'"
n: 'JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
$ echo "n2: '${n//[⁄∕:]/-}'"
n2: 'JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings- The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
$ echo mv -T -- "$fd" "$p/${n//[⁄∕:]/-}"
mv -T -- /media/newest3TB/0 test/JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD] /media/newest3TB/0 test/JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings- The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]

this is what i get in terminal when i paste fd='...' and then the code line by line - ':' clearly becomes '-' o.O
can you repeat that sequence on your machine and paste the output?

[meanmrmustard]

strange, doesn't seem to be working here.


/media/newest3TB/0 test$ fd='/media/newest3TB/0 test/JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ p=${fd%/*}
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ n=${fd##*/}
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ echo "p: '$p'"
p: '/media/newest3TB/0 test'
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ echo "n: '$n'"
n: 'JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ echo "n2: '${n//[⁄∕:]/-}'"
n2: 'JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ echo mv -T -- "$fd" "$p/${n//[⁄∕:]/-}"
mv -T -- /media/newest3TB/0 test/JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD] /media/newest3TB/0 test/JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]

[Vaphell]

o.O
somehow ${variable//pattern/replacement} doesn't work on your end
what is your system/bash version?

lsb_release -a
bash --version

[meanmrmustard]

GNU bash, version 4.2.8(1)-release (i686-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is Ubuntu 11.04 running xfce desktop

[papibe]

Maybe it's not a colon after all, but a Unicode Character 'FULLWIDTH COLON'.

[Vaphell]

crap, i deleted virtualbox image of 11.04 not long ago, only have 11.10+ and don't feel like installing.

you say that even simple

$ x='a:b:c'
$ echo ${x//[⁄∕:]/-}
a-b-c

fails?

tell me, does something like this return the correct result?

$ n='JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
$ echo "$n" | sed -r 's/[⁄∕:]/-/g'
JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings- The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]

if so, you can plug it in in place of ${n//.....}

mv -- "$fd" "$p"/"$(echo "$n" | sed -r 's/[⁄∕:]/-/g' )";

edit:
as papibe mentioned and i started suspecting this might be an issue with the colon not being the one we think it is, just like there are these other slashes.

[papibe]

Maybe it's not a colon after all, but a Unicode Character 'FULLWIDTH COLON'.

For example:

$ touch "$(python -c 'print "file", u"\uFF1A".encode("utf-8"), "one"')"
$ touch "file : one"
$ ls -1 fi*
file : one
file ： one

$ ls -1 file* | od -a
0000000   f   i   l   e  sp   :  sp   o   n   e  nl   f   i   l   e  sp
0000020   o   < sub  sp   o   n   e  nl
0000030

[meanmrmustard]

I'm really out of my depth now.
As if I wasn't already!

[Vaphell]

OP, can you copy paste that troublesome colon verbatim into this

$ printf "\\\x%s\n" $(printf ':'|xxd -p -c1 -u)    # standard ascii
\x3A
$ printf "\\\x%s\n" $(printf '：'|xxd -p -c1 -u)  # fullwidth colon
\xEF
\xBC
\x9A

sadly in charmap program searching for 'colon' yields many vertically aligned double dots :/



edit: you might understand now why IT people consider remote helpdesking one of the worst jobs imaginable. Without hands on the problem they are limited to guesswork and asking weird questions that don't make any sense to common folk in hope of pinpointing the source of issues

[meanmrmustard]

crap, i deleted virtualbox image of 11.04 not long ago, only have 11.10+ and don't feel like installing.

you say that even simple

$ x='a:b:c'
$ echo ${x//[⁄∕:]/-}
a-b-c

fails?

/media/newest3TB/0 test$ x='a:b:c'
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ echo ${x//[⁄∕:]/-}
a:b:c

tell me, does something like this return the correct result?

$ n='JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
$ echo "$n" | sed -r 's/[⁄∕:]/-/g'
JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings- The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]

/media/newest3TB/0 test$ n='JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings: The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]'
/media/newest3TB/0 test$ echo "$n" | sed -r 's/[⁄∕:]/-/g'
JON ANDERSON -Lord Of The Rings- The Unreleased Yes Songs -[no label 1CD]

Yay!

if so, you can plug it in in place of ${n//.....}

mv -- "$fd" "$p"/"$(echo "$n" | sed -r 's/[⁄∕:]/-/g' )";

I'll have to check that when I return in a couple hours.

BTW, I sure appreciate all your help

edit:
as papibe mentioned and i started suspecting this might be an issue with the colon not being the one we think it is, just like there are these other slashes.