shell renaming script

paskari · 09-24-2005, 01:44 PM

I have looked over dozens of scripts for mass file renaming in the past 16 hours and all of them have one major flaw
They can't handle files with spaces in them like so:

"this is a picture.jpg"

I can't seem to get around this, I've tried using ls, ls | grep, dir, creating a buffer, enclosing it in quotes, and even sed still treats it as four different files.

someone please help me

thank you

david_ross · 09-24-2005, 01:57 PM

Without knowing the scripts it's difficult to know the problem exactly but try setting $IFS to a newline first:
IFS="
"

druuna · 09-24-2005, 02:11 PM

Hi,

Couldn't you do something like this:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

# Get wanted files. *txt (and maybe path to) should/could be changed
find . -name "*txt" | \
while read THISLINE
do
  # create new filename (space to dot in this case)
  SPACE2DOT="`echo ${THISLINE} | sed 's/ /./g'`"
  # move file
  mv "${THISLINE}" "${SPACE2DOT}"
done

Hope this helps.

paskari · 09-24-2005, 02:15 PM

here's how I managed to do it:

Code:

#move all .jpg files
for i in *.jpg; do
	mv "$i" $srcDir/"$i"
done

turns out it's easier than I thought