Help with sed and parentheses.

Allis · 12-24-2011, 11:47 AM

So I'm trying to something similar to

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ng-sed-812975/

e.g.
Test (Remove) --> Test

Here is what I was trying

#for i in *$*$*; do j=`echo $i |sed -e 's/[()]//g'`; mv "$i" "$j"; done

for f in *; do fn=`echo $f|sed 's/$[[:alnum:]]*$[[:space:]]*(.)$\..*$/\1\2/'`; mv $f $fn; done

The first one only removes parentheses, so I don't want that one. I tried the second one but it just won't work; it does nothing. I don't really understand whats wrong.

Thank you.

jhwilliams · 12-24-2011, 12:07 PM

How about this, using the Perl rename command:

Code:

IFS='' find -type f -exec rename 's/ ?\(.*\)\ ?//' {} \;

What's going on here:

(1) Set the input field separator temporarily to nothing (to get around white space wrongly delimiting the filenames.)
(2) Put the rename command in a find command, to enact the command on the entire current directory tree.
(3) The regular expression 's/ ?$.*$\ ?//' replaces matches of (0-1 spaces)(anything in parentheses)(0-1 spaces) with the empty string.

HTH

Allis · 12-24-2011, 12:28 PM

Thank you that is very helpful! I was wondering is it possible to run both a bash script and a perl script in one file?

Or do you know how I can remove the first 3 or X chars from the file name using perl?

jhwilliams · 12-24-2011, 12:53 PM

Well, that's not actually Perl, just a call to a remote Perl script. It's all bash. But yes, if you wanted to script it you could:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

# First command, get rid of all of the () stuff:
IFS='' find -type f -exec rename 's/ ?\(.*\)\ ?//' {} \;

# Okay, now remove the first 3 chars (or replace with 3 with however many you want.)
IFS='' find -type f -exec rename 's/^.{3}//' {} \;

David the H. · 12-24-2011, 03:16 PM

You can also try using bash's exended globbing patterns.

Code:

for f in *\(*\)*; do echo "${f//\(*([[:alnum:]])\)}"; done

For more advanced work, you can use real regexes inside of [[..]]. The BASH_REMATCH array stores any captures.

Code:

name='keepthis(remove this)keepthis.txt'
re='^([^(]+)[(][^)]+[)](.*)$'

[[ $name =~ $re ]] && echo "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"

# output: keepthiskeepthis.txt

More bash string manipulation techniques here:

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/100