I am trying to remove and replace quotation marks that are present in a file name. For example, I would like to change:
$ ls
abc"def"ghi"jkl"mno
to this
$ ls
abc:def:ghi:jkl:mno
In trying to solve this, I came across How to rename a bunch of files to eliminate quote marks, which is exactly what I want to do. However, it didn't work for my case. To figure out why, I tried creating a test file like this:
$ touch abba\"abba\"cde\"cde\"efef
With this file, the solutions I came across (such as mentioned above) worked. But why didn't it work for the first file?
One thing I discovered was that bash command completion sees them differently. If I type in
$ ls abb<tab>
bash will complete the filename like so:
$ abba\"abba\"cde\"cde\"efef
just as I created it. But for the original file, bash completion went like this:
$ ls abc<tab>
results in
$ abc"def"ghi"jkl"mno
So in the test case file, there is an escape of the quotation marks, and in the other case (the file I really want to rename), there is no escaping of the the quotation marks. I don't know how the original files were named.
Can anyone explain why bash sees these names differently, and how I would go about renaming my file?
Here is two ways to rename a file with "(quotation) mark,
option 1: With escape character \
mv abc\"cdf\"efg\"hij newFileName
option 2: By using '(single quote)
mv 'abc"cdf"efg"hij' newFileName
Note: using special charaters like :(colon) in file name might not be a good idea,
and regarding the auto completion, it usually fill the name with escape character, example
ls abc<tab> will complete the name to ls abc\"cdf\"efg\"hij
unless you start the name with a quote, example
ls 'abc<tab> will complete the name to ls 'abc"cdf"efg"hij'
Related
cat ~/.last_dir
/mnt/c/Users/Administrator/OneDrive/Desktop/main project/backup/main project 2
cd cat ~/.last_dir
-bash: cd: too many arguments
I tried using backslash inside the file
/mnt/c/Users/Administrator/OneDrive/Desktop/main\ project/backup/main\ project\ 2
Still same error
You need to quote the results of expanding cat ...:
cd "$(cat ~/.last_dir)"
cd "$(<~/.last_dir)"
First, put quotes around the $(...) to make the space part of the filename.
Second, $(<...) is a bash construct that reads the file directly without executing cat, but is not entirely portable.
For a more generic, less bash-specific version, use Maxim's solution.
just put quotation marks around your path:
"/mnt/c/Users/Administrator/OneDrive/Desktop/main project/backup/main project 2"
this should work for most cases
I want to store output of ls command in my bash script in a variable and use each file name in a loop, but for example one file in the directory has name "Hello world", when I do variable=$(ls) "Hello" and "world" end up as two separate entries, and when I try to do
for i in $variable
do
mv $i ~
done
it shows error that files "Hello" and "world" doesn't exist.
Is there any way I can access all files in current directory and run some command even if the files have space(s) in their names.
If you must, dirfiles=(/path/of/interest/*).
And accept the admonition against parsing the output of ls!
I understand you are new to this and I'd like to help. But it isn't easy for me (us?) to provide you with an answer that would be of much help to you by the way you've stated your question.
Based on what I hear so far, you don't seem to have a basic understanding on how parameter expansions work in the shell. The following two links will be useful to you:
Matching Pathnames, Parameters
Now, if your task at hand is to operate on files meeting certain criteria then find(1) will likely to do the job.
Say it with me: don't parse the output of ls! For more information, see this post on Unix.SE.
A better way of doing this is:
for i in *
do
mv -- "$i" ~
done
or simply
mv -- * ~
I am experimenting with wildcards in bash and tried to list all the files that start with "xyz" but does not end with ".TXT" but getting incorrect results.
Here is the command that I tried:
$ ls -l xyz*[!\.TXT]
It is not listing the files with names "xyz" and "xyzTXT" that I have in my directory. However, it lists "xyz1", "xyz123".
It seems like adding [!\.TXT] after "xyz*" made the shell look for something that start with "xyz" and has at least one character after it.
Any ideas why it is happening and how to correct this command? I know it can be achieved using other commands but I am especially interested in knowing why it is failing and if it can done just using wildcards.
These commands will do what you want
shopt -s extglob
ls -l xyz!(*.TXT)
shopt -u extglob
The reason why your command doesn't work is beacause xyz*[!\.TXT] which is equivalent to xyz*[!\.TX] means xyz followed by any sequence of character (*) and finally a character in set {!,\,.,T,X} so matches 'xyzwhateveryouwant!' 'xyzwhateveryouwant\' 'xyzwhateveryouwant.' 'xyzwhateveryouwantT' 'xyzwhateveryouwantX'
EDIT: where whateveryouwant does not contain any of !\.TX
I don't think this is doable with only wildcards.
Your command isn't working because it means:
Match everything that has xyz followed by whatever you want and it must not end with sequent character: \, .,T and X. The second T doesn't count as far as what you have inside [] is read as a family of character and not as a string as you thought.
You don't either need to 'escape' . as long as it has no special meaning inside a wildcard.
At least, this is my knowledge of wildcards.
I'm trying to use the rename command in a Terminal in Ubuntu to append a string to the beginning of some avi file names as follows.
rename -n 's/(\w)\.avi$/String_to_add__$1\.avi/' *.avi
So I expect the following:
String_to_add_MyMovie.avi
Problem is that when I run the command it appends the string to the end of the file name, so I end up with the following:
MyMovie_String_to_add_.avi
I'm not sure if I have the perlexpr syntax wrong or something else. Any insight is appreciated.
UPDATE:
Thanks for the suggestions, I tried the suggestions from alno and plundra and made the following modification:
rename -n 's/(\w+)\.avi$/String_to_add__$1\.avi/' *.avi
But now the file gets the string inserted in the middle of the name as follows:
My_String_to_add_Movie
My apologies though, I neglected to mention that the titles are preceded by 3 numeric values, so the file name nomenclature is {3 numbers}-My_Movie.avi so for example 001-My_Movie.avi. But I didn't think this would make a difference since I'm assuming \w+ matches alphanumeric characters, might the '-' be the issue?
Haven't tried Christian's approach yet, I want to be able to use the rename command, or at least understand why it's not working before I try a different approach.
I don't think rename -n is standard. You could do this:
for i in *.avi; do mv $i String_to_add_$i; done
You're only matching a single character with \w, you want \w+, so the complete line would be:
rename -n 's/(\w+)\.avi$/String_to_add__$1\.avi/' *.avi
Correct version:
rename -n 's/(\w+)\.avi$/String_to_add__$1\.avi/' *.avi
You simply forgot + after \w, so it tried to match only one character.
i have a directory with a lot of subdirectories with a # infront of them:
#adhasdk
#ad18237
I want to rename them all and remove the # caracter
I tried to do:
rename -n `s/#//g` *
but didn't seem to work.
-bash: s/#//g: No such file or directory
Any ideas on this.
Thanks
Just use
$ rename 's/^#//' *
use -n just to check that what you think it would happen really happens.
In you example you have the clue about the wrong quotes used (backticks) in the error message
-bash: s/#//g: No such file or directory
bash is trying to execute a command named s/#//g.
No that using g (global) and not anchoring the regular expression you will replace any #, not just the one in the first position.
I don't know whether it's just a typo when you typed it here, but that "rename" command should work if:
you leave off the "-n" and
you quote the substitution with regular single-quotes and not back-quotes
The "-n" tells it to not really do anything. The back-quotes are just wrong (they mean something but not what you want here).
The problem is that you use backticks (`). You should use normal quotes:
rename -n 's/#//g' *
for DIR in \#*/
do
echo mv "$DIR" "${DIR/#\#/}"
done
I had to rename all folders inside a given folder. Each folder name had some text inside round braces. The following command removed the round braces from all folder names:
rename 's/(.+)//' *
Some distros doesn't support regexp in rename. You have to install prename. Even more, sometimes you can't install prename and you have to install gprename to have binary prename.
If you have 'prename' then just change backtick character " ` " to single quote and everything should work.
So the solution should be:
prename -n 's/#//g' *
or
prename -n 'y/#//' *