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Full Discussion: How best to remove certain characters from filenames and folders recursively
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting How best to remove certain characters from filenames and folders recursively Post 302641853 by Corona688 on Wednesday 16th of May 2012 02:42:20 PM
Old 05-16-2012
Problem with renaming files and folders recursively is if you start renaming your folders, then the paths you're looking inside are changing on the go... So you need to process the insides first.

Code:
#!/bin/bash


find . -depth -name "*[,&<>*?|\":'()]*" |     # Find all files or folders containing 'bad' characters.
while read FILEDIR                            # Read them line-by-line.
do
        DIR="${FILEDIR%/*}"                   # Get the folder its inside
        FILE="${FILEDIR/*\/}"                 # Get the plain name.
        NEWFILE="${FILE//[,&<>*?|\":\'()]/_}" # Substitute _ for bad things.
        echo mv "$DIR/$FILE" "$DIR/$NEWFILE"  # Rename it.
done

Remove the 'echo' once you're sure it does what you want.
This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
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LEARN ABOUT LINUX

new

NEW(1)								     [nmh-1.5]								    NEW(1)

NAME

       new - report on folders with new messages

       fnext - set current folder to next folder with new messages

       fprev - set current folder to previous folder with new messages

       unseen - scan new messages in all folders with new messages

SYNOPSIS

       new [sequences] [-mode mode] [-folders foldersfile] [-version] [-help]

       fnext is equivalent to new -mode fnext

       fprev is equivalent to new -mode fprev

       unseen is equivalent to new -mode unseen

DESCRIPTION

       New  in	its  default  mode  produces  a  one-line-per-folder  listing of all folders containing messages in the listed sequences or in the
       sequences listed in the profile entry "Unseen-Sequence".  Each line contains the folder, the number of messages in the  desired	sequences,
       and the message lists from the .mh_sequences file.  For example:

	    foo     11.* 40-50
	    bar    380.  760-772 824-828
	     total    391.

       The `*' on foo indicates that it is the current folder.	The last line shows the total number of messages in the desired sequences.

       New crawls the folder hierarchy recursively to find all folders, and prints them in lexicographic order.  Override this behavior by provid-
       ing foldersfile containing the pre-sorted list of folders new should check, one per line.

       In fnext and fprev modes, new instead changes to the next or previous matching folder, respectively.

       In unseen mode, new executes scan sequences for each matching folder.

FILES

       $HOME/.mh_profile	  The user profile

PROFILE COMPONENTS

       Path:		    To determine the user's nmh directory
       Current-Folder:	    To find the default current folder
       Unseen-Sequence:     The name of the unseen message sequence

SEE ALSO

       scan(1), mh-format(5)

HISTORY

       Based on Luke Mewburn's new (http://www.mewburn.net/luke/src/new).

MH.6.8								   11 June 2012 							    NEW(1)
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