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Full Discussion: Remove leading spaces from file names and folders
Operating Systems OS X (Apple) Remove leading spaces from file names and folders Post 302801787 by prometheon123 on Thursday 2nd of May 2013 02:16:50 PM
Old 05-02-2013
Remove leading spaces from file names and folders
Hi All,

I have a vexing issue with leading spaces in file names. Basically, we're moving tons of data from our ancient afp file share to Box.com and Box forbids leading spaces in files or folders. The HFS file system seems to be perfectly fine with this, but almost all other Unix file systems are not. Of course, our users put leading spaces in some of their file names and folders so that those files and folders would show up at the top of the directory listing in the Finder. I have almost seven thousand of these instances spread out among 600 gigs of file data. My bash script already strips out illegal characters, however, I'm not sure how to add leading spaces to the script. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Code:
#!/bin/bash

# Find all files or folders containing 'bad' characters.
find . -depth -name "*[^a-zA-Z0-9._- ]*" |
# Read them line-by-line.
while read FILEDIR
do
       # Get the folder its inside
       DIR="${FILEDIR%/*}"
       # Get the plain name.
       FILE="${FILEDIR/*\/}"
       # Substitute _ for bad things.
       NEWFILE="${FILE//[^a-zA-Z0-9._- ]/_}"
       # Rename it.
       mv "$DIR/$FILE" "$DIR/$NEWFILE"
done

Last edited by prometheon123; 05-02-2013 at 03:17 PM.. Reason: add tags
 

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LEARN ABOUT REDHAT

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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