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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Renaming Multiple Files by removing characters Post 302914430 by bakunin on Monday 25th of August 2014 10:50:21 PM
Old 08-25-2014
@junior-helper: thread opener stated he uses Korn shell, so chances are this is not a Linux system at all. There is a good chance that the "rename"-command is not there.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pchegoor
I would like to rename Multiple files in a Unix Directory using Ksh Command.

Eg ATT8-2011-10-01 00:00:00-MSA-IMM-SINGLE_AND_FAMILY_COVERAGE-DED-$2000-X114817.PDF

needs to be renamed as

ATT8-2011-10-01-MSA-IMM-SINGLE_AND_FAMILY_COVERAGE-DED-$2000-X114817.PDF
Basically this is a simple job: create a loop in which you run a command mv "$oldname" "$newname" in which you rename one file after the other:

Code:
find /path/to/your/files -type <f -name optional-file-mask> |\
while read OLDNAME ; do
     mv "$OLDNAME" "$NEWNAME"
done

Which leaves the question where "$NEWNAME" comes from. You could use any text-modifying utility (sed, awk, ....) of which Unix is so rich of to construct the new name from the old. This utility would be called once for every single file and this would add a lot of overhead to your script, which should be avoided.

Fortunately the shell itself offers a great way to modify strings too, without having to resort to an external utility: the "parameter expansion" or "variable epansion". The syntax looks awkward at first, but its execution speed beats every external utility by some order of magnitude. Twenty lines of this is perhaps still way faster than a single awk- (sed-, ...) call.

I suggest having a look into the man page for details, here is the solution for your problem as you stated it: remove a middle " 00-00-00" from a string:

Code:
find /path/to/your/files -type <f -name optional-file-mask> |\
while read OLDNAME ; do
     chBegin="${OLDNAME%% 00:00:00*}"
     chEnd="${OLDNAME##* 00:00:00}"
     NEWNAME="${chBegin}${chEnd}"
     print - "OLDNAME: $OLDNAME"
     print - "chBegin: $chBegin    chEnd: $chEnd"
     print - "NEWNAME: $NEWNAME"

     print - mv "$OLDNAME" "$NEWNAME"
done

Run with the print-statements to see how it works, remove them once you feel comfortable with the output.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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BTAG(1) 							    btag Manual 							   BTAG(1)

NAME
btag - A command line based multimedia tagger SYNOPSIS
btag [options] path1 [path2] [path3] ... DESCRIPTION
btag is a TagLib-based command line multimedia tag editor that attempts to automate the process of tagging a lot of files at once. It uses the tags found in the supplied files as well as interactive user input to determine new values for the tags. It can also optionally rename files and directories based on those new values. You can supply paths to files or directories to btag. Directories are recursively traversed and all files found are tagged. Directories are also handled differently in the sense that btag will attempt to keep information about the previously tagged files to provide sane defaults for all other files in the same parent directory. Only files with file extensions supported by TagLib are considered. OPTIONS
-D/--dry-run Don't do anything, just show what would have been done (dry run mode) -d/--dir-rename-format format Use format to rename the directories where the multimedia files were found -i/--input-filter filter Use filter as the input filter -f/--filter filter Use filter as both the input and the output filter -h/--help Display usage information and exit -n/--renaming-filter filter Use filter as the renaming filter -o/--output-filter filter Use filter as the input filter -r/--file-rename-format format Use format to rename the multimedia files -t/--title-locale locale Use locale for proper (although lax) locale-specific title casing INPUT AND OUTPUT FILTERS
btag supports input and output filters that are applied to the text fields (artist, album and song title). Those filters can protect against basic mistakes such as duplicate whitespace. Input filters are used on the tags as they are loaded from the multimedia files. This filtered information is used to provide suggestions to the user when the interactive tagger requests information for those text fields. If an output filter is configured, the user input is then filtered, and if the filtered text does not match the user input, the user is asked for confirmation. In most cases, the input filter should match the output filter (which is why the -f option is handy). You may choose to specify only an input filter, in which case the user input is not filtered. If you don't specify an input filter, though, the default input filter will be used. The currently available filters are: basic Provides basic filtering by removing duplicate or trailing whitespace, is the default input filter and the base for all other filters first_upper The first character in the field is uppercased, while all others are lowercased lower All characters are lowercased title The first character of each word is uppercased (with exceptions), while all others are lowercased upper All characters are uppercased The title capitalization algorithm will follow locale-specific context-insensitive rules depending on the value of the -t parameter. Note that strict title capitalization rules often depend on the context in which the words are used, the precise analysis of which is much beyond the scope of btag. The currently supported title locale specifications are: en English (default) es Spanish RENAMING FORMATS
If a format is specified with the -r option, the tagged multimedia files are renamed accordingly. Likewise, if the -d option is used, the directory in which multimedia files were tagged is renamed according to the specified format. The specified format is converted to a file or directory name using the following substitutions: %artist Artist name %album Album name %year Year of release %track Track number (only replaced by the -r option) %title Song title (only replaced by the -r option) Renaming happens after the tags are written, and it's relative to btag's working directory. For directory renaming, the last known artist, album and year information is used. Only directories that contain files that were tagged by btag are renamed. btag does not prevent you from overwriting existing files using the formats described here. RENAMING FILTERS
Renaming filters are used to ensure that the file and directory names generated using the renaming formats (if specified) are valid (safe) in the context of the current file system. The following renaming filters are currently available: conservative Conservative character replacements are performed, recommended for FAT32 file systems unix Generates file and directory names that should be valid in an Unix environment (default) EXAMPLE
Using title casing with English rules and sensible renaming formats generating FAT32-safe file and directory names: $ btag --file-rename-format '%track. %title' --dir-rename-format '%album (%year)' --filter title --title-locale en --renaming-format conservative /path/to/myalbum Using an input filter only: $ btag --input-filter lower /path/to/myalbum btag 2011-06-04 BTAG(1)
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