Remove Parentheses from File Names
This script will rename Windows backup files by removing the ’
(date)’ from the filename. It will remove the parentheses and everything
between them from the file name, so that a file with the name
file-1 (2023-09-10).txt will be renamed to
file-1.txt. Note that since the data between the
parentheses will be removed, the resulting file name must be unique for
this script to prevent data from being overwritten. Other than that it
should work for any fileset that meets the beforementioned
constraints.
First, let’s create some sample files:
$ for i in {0..9}; do touch "file-${i} (number-${i}).txt"; done
$ ls
file-0\ (number-0).txt file-4\ (number-4).txt file-8\ (number-8).txt
file-1\ (number-1).txt file-5\ (number-5).txt file-9\ (number-9).txt
file-2\ (number-2).txt file-6\ (number-6).txt
file-3\ (number-3).txt file-7\ (number-7).txt
Now, we’ll execute the script on the sample files:
$ for f in *; do n=$(echo $f | sed "s/[ (][^)]*[)]//g");mv "${f}" "${n}"; done
If we look at the directory listing now we see that the file names are updated:
$ ls
file-0.txt file-2.txt file-4.txt file-6.txt file-8.txt
file-1.txt file-3.txt file-5.txt file-7.txt file-9.txt