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__$1\.avi/' *.avi
You simply forgot + after \w, so it tried to match only one character.
Related
I have a directory containing files following the following naming convention:
Label_0000_AA.gz
Label_0001_BB.gz
Label_0002_CC.gz
...
All I want to do is to rename these files so that the _#### number pattern is removed, resulting in:
Label_AA.gz
Label_BB.gz
Label_CC.gz
...
but only up to a certain number. E.g.: I may have 10000 files but might only want to remove the pattern in the first 3000. Would this be possible using something like bash?
If you don't have prename or rename -
(assuming the names are consistent)
for f in Label_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]_[A-Z][A-Z].gz
do mv "$f" "${f//_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]/}"
done
To just do a certain range -
for n in {0000..2999}
do for f in Label_${n}_??.gz
do mv $f ${f//_$n/}
done
done
You're sure there are not collisions?
If you can name the pattern you want to change/remove in a regex you can use the command prename:
prename 's/_[0-3][[:digit:]]{3}_/_/g' Label_*.gz
This regex would only remove numbers 0000-3999.
Using the flag -n does a "dry-run" and shows what it would do.
Edit: Thanks #KamilCuk to remind me about two renames. I made it clear and changed the name to prename.
I want to add the ".sbd" after all files ending on ".utf8" in a directory
I do not want to replace the extensions, but really want to add them so the filenames will look like "filename.utf8.sbd"
I think I should adapt the following code, but don't manage to find out exactly how
for f in *.utf8 ; do mv "$f" "$f.sbd" ; done
Can anyone help me? I am very new to the command line
Thanks a bunch!
Your code should work if no file has spaces (or other "special" character) in the name and if the directory is not pathologically big.
In those cases, you can use something like this:
ls|grep '*.utf8$'|while read i; do mv "$i" "$i.sbd"; done
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'
I have separated some tracks from mp3 mixes using mp3splt.
BASH: (mp3splt -c('**!!***use .cue file***!!**') [cuefile.cue] [nonstopmix.mp3] ~for anyone interested, is in the Ubu repos~)
And I ended up with these filenames: "Antares" - 01 - "Xibalba".mp3 which is not a format I prefer, now I've made it a little project to change them with a shell script but its more difficult than I anticipated.
I want to change the filename from:
"Antares" - 01 - "Xibalba".mp
to:
01-Antares_-_Xibalba.mp3
so far I've used :
for var in *.mp3; do mv $var {var/"/}; done
and I could repeat that until I'm through, delete the 0x number and add one but I'd like to do it more efficient.
Could anyone give me a pointer (!not a script!) ?
I'd still like to write it myself but there's so much options that I'm a bit lost.
so far I thought to use this program flow:
read all the filenames containing .mp3 and declare as variable $var
strip $var from quotes
select 0x number, append delimiter _ (0x_)
move 0x_ to the beginning of the string
select remaining ' - - ' and change to '-'
done
which bash programs to use? especially changing the 0x puzzles me cuz I need a loop which increments this number and test if it is present in the filename variable and then it has to be changed.
It is easy to do in python 2.x. You can use this logic in any language you want.
import string
a=raw_input('Enter the name of song')
a=a.replace('"', "")
a=a.replace('.mp', ' .mp3')
words = a.split()
print words[2]+'-'+words[0]+'_-_'+words[4]+words[5]
Logic:
I removed ", then make .mp to .mp3, then splitted the string, which created a list ( array ) and then printed the elements according to need.
Try doing this :
rename -n 's/"(\w+)"\s+-\s*(\d+)\s*-\s*"(\w+)"\.mp/$2-$1_-_$3.mp3/' *mp
from the shell prompt. It's very useful, you can put some perl tricks like I does in a substitution.
You can remove the -n (dry-run mode switch) when your tests become valids.
There are other tools with the same name which may or may not be able to do this, so be careful.
If you run the following command (linux)
$ file $(readlink -f $(type -p rename))
and you have a result like
.../rename: Perl script, ASCII text executable
then this seems to be the right tool =)
If not, to make it the default (usually already the case) on Debian and derivative like Ubuntu :
$ sudo update-alternatives --set rename /path/to/rename
Last but not least, this tool was originally written by Larry Wall, the Perl's dad.
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/#//' *