find & remove characters in filenames Post: 302582851

Sponsored Content

Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers find & remove characters in filenames Post 302582851 by ryran on Sunday 18th of December 2011 10:04:24 PM

12-18-2011

Registered User

Quote:

Originally Posted by radoulov

Code:

find . -type f -name '*[:?"]*' |
  while IFS= read -r; do
    mv -- "$REPLY" "${REPLY//[:?\"]}"
  done

Very nice radoulov! I'm a bash dude and was familiar with ${VAR/MATCH/REPLACE/} syntax but didn't know about all the extra details, so was a bit confused at first. For anyone else that's looking for an explanation, here's the relevant bit from bash's man page:

Code:

${parameter/pattern/string}
   Pattern substitution.  The pattern is expanded to produce  a  pattern  just  as  in  
   pathname expansion.  Parameter is expanded and the longest match of pattern against
   its value is replaced with string.  If pattern begins with /, all matches  of  pat‐
   tern are replaced with string.  Normally only the first match is replaced.  If pat‐
   tern begins with #, it must match at the beginning of the expanded value of parame‐
   ter.   If  pattern begins with %, it must match at the end of the expanded value of
   parameter.  If string is null, matches of pattern are deleted and the  /  following
   pattern  may  be  omitted.   If  parameter is @ or *, the substitution operation is
   applied to each positional parameter in turn, and the expansion  is  the  resultant
   list.   If parameter is an array variable subscripted with @ or *, the substitution
   operation is applied to each member of the array in turn, and the expansion is  the 
   resultant list.

PS: Can you explain what exactly "IFS=" is doing in there?

ryran

View Public Profile for ryran

Find all posts by ryran

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

Perl code to search for filenames that contain special characters

Hello, I have a requirement to search a directory, which contains any number of other directories for file names that contain special characters. directory structure DIR__ |__>DIR1 |__>DIR2__ |__>DIR2.1 |__>DIR2.2 |__>DIR3 .. ...

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

Script to find and remove characters

Hi. I have many files in a folder, and even more in the subfolders. I need a script that finds and removes certain characters (them being /n in this one) in the files in the folder and it's subfolders. So, could someone write me a script that works in Linux, does this: Searchs for "/n" in...

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Filenames created with '\r' characters at the end

Hi all, Am creating files and doing copy,compare and deletion. As i do not want to mention the filepath everywhere, i store the filepaths in variables. FILENAME="/home/test/create/Myfile.txt" WR_PATH="/home/test/wrie/writefile.txt" RD_PATH="/home/test/myread/readfile.txt" echo "This is my...

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Bash script - stripping away characters that can't be used in filenames

I want to create a temp file which is named based on a search string. The search string may contain spaces or characters that aren't supposed to be used in filenames so I want to strip those out. My thought was to use 'tr' with but the result is the opposite of what I want: $ echo "test...

5. Shell Programming and Scripting

Find duplicate filenames and remove in different mount point

Hi Gurus, Do any kind souls encounter have the same script as mentioned here. Find and compare filenames in different mount point and remove duplicates. Thanks a million!!! wanna13e

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

Single/Multiple Line with Special characters - Find & Replace in Unix Script

Hi, I am creating a script to do a find and replace single/multiple lines in a file with any number of lines. I have written a logic in a script that reads a reference file say "findrep" and populates two variables $FIND and $REPLACE print $FIND gives Hi How r $u Rahul() Note:...

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

Perl: windows filenames escape characters

I have a perl find program that will find all files of window application stored on unix disks. Ofcourse these files contain all the weird characters windows allows, but on *nix pukes out all kinds of unwanted effects when processing these. Is their a utility that will escape all these...

8. Shell Programming and Scripting

How best to remove certain characters from filenames and folders recursively

hello, I'm trying to figure out which tool is best for recursively renaming and files or folders using the characters \/*?�<>| in their name. I've tried many examples that use Bash, Python and Perl, but I'm not much of a programmer I seem to have hit a roadblock. Does anyone have any...

9. Shell Programming and Scripting

Delete characters & find unique IP addresses with port

Hi, I have a file having following content. <sip:9376507346@97.208.31.7:51088 <sip:9907472291@97.208.31.7:51208 <sip:8103742422@97.208.31.7:51024 <sip:9579892841@97.208.31.7:51080 <sip:9370904222@97.208.31.7:51104 <sip:9327665215@97.208.31.7:51104 <sip:9098364262@97.208.31.7:51024...

10. UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

To remove any invisible and special characters from the file(exclude @!#$&*)

Hi Guys, My requirement is to remove any invisible and special characters from the file like control M(carriage return) and alt numerics and it should not replace @#!$% abc|xyz|acd�� adc|123| 12�� Please help on this. Thanks Rakesh

LEARN ABOUT HPUX

evmeventnamematchstr

EvmEventNameMatch(3)					     Library Functions Manual					      EvmEventNameMatch(3)

NAME

       EvmEventNameMatch(), EvmEventNameMatchStr() - match EVM event name

SYNOPSIS

   Library
       EVM Support Library

   Parameters
       pattern	     The  event name pattern sought.  The pattern may be any valid event name string.  It may include wildcard characters in place
		     of any component.

       event	     The event containing the event name to be compared against the pattern.

       match	     The result of the match. This operand is set to if the name matches the pattern, and to if it does not.

       candidate     A character string to be matched against the pattern

DESCRIPTION

       Because special matching rules apply when deciding whether a candidate event name matches a known name, the  EVM  name  matching  functions
       should  be  used  for matching purposes, rather than the C string comparison functions The EVM functions match an event name against a sup-
       plied pattern, ignoring any trailing appended components in the candidate name, and correctly matching wildcard characters.

       The function takes an event and an event name pattern as input, and returns an indication of  whether  the  event  contains  a  name  which
       matches the pattern in the match output argument.  The pattern may be any valid event name string, and may also include wildcard characters
       in place of any component.  A wildcard in the pattern matches zero or more name components.  A matches  exactly	one  component.   A  match
       occurs if the event name matches all components indicated by the pattern, even if the name has additional trailing elements.

       The function performs the same check as but takes a character string as the candidate event name, instead of extracting the candidate event
       name from a supplied event.

       Both functions set the match output argument to if the name matches the pattern, and to if it does not.

RETURN VALUE

       The operation completed without error.  The comparison was successful.  The value of the match operand indicates whether the  name  matches
       the pattern.

       One of the arguments to the function is invalid.
	      The supplied pattern contains invalid characters.

       The supplied event does not contain a name.

ERRORS

       The value of is not set.

SEE ALSO

   Routines
       memccpy(3C), strcat(3C).

   Event Management
       EVM(5).

   EVM Events
       EvmEvent(5).

															      EvmEventNameMatch(3)

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. Shell Programming and Scripting

Perl code to search for filenames that contain special characters

Discussion started by: jerardfjay

2. Shell Programming and Scripting

Script to find and remove characters

Discussion started by: Zerby

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

Filenames created with '\r' characters at the end

Discussion started by: amio

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

Bash script - stripping away characters that can't be used in filenames

Discussion started by: mglenney