rename command with regular expression

[amranny]

Hi,

1. I tried to use rename with regular expression like this:
rename 's/r/k/' *
and it doesn't work,
I use :
GNU bash, version 3.2.33(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)
on fc9

is it supported?

2. I'm trying to remove spaces from file names and none of this work :
find -type f -exec rename 'y/\ /\_/' {} \;

or

for i in *.mp3; do j=`echo $i|sed 's/ /_/g'`;mv $i $j; done


can anybody help?

thanks
Amir

[Seve]

( Moved to General Support )

and fixed your overly large fonts

[jose.carmona]

1. rename don't support regexp.

2. try krename graphical tool. (http://www.krename.net/)

[icydog]

Removing spaces from files is simple:

$ rename ' ' _ *

Rename only replaces the first occurrence, so you may have to run this a bunch of times until all the spaces are gone.

For regular expressions, Ubuntu (and probably others) come with a perl version of rename instead of the one that comes with Fedora. It is attached. Just rename it to prename.pl or something and chmod +x it. To change spaces to underscores, you can then run it like:

$ prename 's/ /_/g' *

[GrapeShot]

Run this in the folder that has the files with spaces and it will remove the spaces from all spaces. If you want to replace it with an underscore or a dash, put the symbol you want to to use in between the two slashes just before the letter g (ie sed -e 's/ /_/g')

ls | grep -e " " | while read i; do newname=`echo -n "$i" | sed -e 's/ //g'`; echo `mv "$i" "$newname"`; done

[amranny]

Hi,
First thanks a lot.
I took this
rename "s/ *//g" *.mp3
from: http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/renami...ll-prompt.html

How come it is not supported? does every system has its own variation?

Thanks again
Amir

[icydog]

Amir,

Please read my post. Also, to see what "rename" does in Fedora, do "man rename".

Thanks.

[sideways]

Nice use of rename icydog, simplest command line removal of filename spaces I've seen.

To automate it for large directories (so you don't have to keep re-executing it) you can loop it like this (in bash)

while [ $(ls | grep -c ' ') -gt 0 ]; do rename ' ' _ *; done

[ghostdog74]

Originally Posted by amranny

Hi,

1. I tried to use rename with regular expression like this:
rename 's/r/k/' *
and it doesn't work,
I use :
GNU bash, version 3.2.33(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)
on fc9

is it supported?

2. I'm trying to remove spaces from file names and none of this work :
find -type f -exec rename 'y/\ /\_/' {} \;

or

for i in *.mp3; do j=`echo $i|sed 's/ /_/g'`;mv $i $j; done


can anybody help?

thanks
Amir

you can use the Python script here
example usage:

# ls -1 "test artis"*.mp3
test artist1.mp3
test artist2.mp3
test artist3.mp3

# filerenamer.py -p " " -e "" -l "test artis*.mp3" #use -l to list
==>>>>  [ /home/test artist2.mp3 ]==>[ /home/testartist2.mp3 ]
==>>>>  [ /home/test artist3.mp3 ]==>[ /home/testartist3.mp3 ]
==>>>>  [ /home/test artist1.mp3 ]==>[ /home/testartist1.mp3 ]

# filerenamer.py -p " " -e ""  "test artis*.mp3" #remove -l to commit
/home/test artist2.mp3  is renamed to  /home/testartist2.mp3
/home/test artist3.mp3  is renamed to  /home/test/testartist3.mp3
/home/test artist1.mp3  is renamed to  /home/testartist1.mp3

# ls -1 "test artis"*.mp3
/bin/ls: test artis*.mp3: No such file or directory

# ls -1 "testartis"*.mp3
testartist1.mp3
testartist2.mp3
testartist3.mp3