Gregg's MOTD

Removing Blank Spaces from a Group of File Names

This set of commands iterate over each file in the current directory and will replace any blank spaces in a filename with an underscore (_).

First, we’ll create a set of 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 set of commands:

$ for f in *\ *; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}"; done

And now you can see that the blanks have been replaced.

$ 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

Tags: cli, bash, rename, motd

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

Tags: cli, bash, rename, motd

Rename Files That Start With a Special Character

Suppose you find that you have a file with a special character and you want to delete it:

$ ls
-badfile.txt PrintHood reg57.txt
Favorites Recent scripts

$ rm -badfile.txt
rm: invalid option -- 'b'
Try 'rm ./-badfile.txt' to remove the file '-badfile.txt'.
Try 'rm --help' for more information.

$ ls *.txt
ls: invalid option -- 'e'
Try 'ls --help' for more information.

First, find the inode of the file by using ls -i on the command line:

$ ls -i
54804119 -badfile.txt 56634824 PrintHood
56634825 Recent 56634807 Favorites
54804251 reg57.txt 56634833 scripts

The “-i” flag will display the file’s inode:
54804119 -badfile.txt

The inode for the “bad” file is 54804119. Once the inode is identified, use the find command to rename the file:

$ find . -inum 54804119 -exec mv {} NewName \;

$ ls NewName
NewName

Now you can delete it.

$ rm NewName

Tags: cli, rename, find, inode, motd

Bulk Change of File Extensions in Directory

If you have a directory of files where you want to change all of the file extensions you may find this code snippet useful to rename them:

for i in *.tmp
do
mv ${i} ${i%.*}.txt
done

Tags: cli, bash, rename, motd