file renaming question--replace multiple instances
 

I've been trying to use the rename command to remove certain non-standard characters from filenames, but I can't get it to work the way I want.

Now the rename command uses pretty much the same syntax as sed. Trouble is, I don't know sed well enough to make this work.

I can usually use the 'y/a/b/' substitution syntax to replace all instances of a character with another. But let's say, for example, that I want to simply remove all instances of commas from a filename, say "Beatles--long,_long,_long.ogg". If I try something like:

rename 'y/,//'

it completely fails to work. It appears to be because the substitution field is blank; it needs something to replace the comma with. But I don't want it to be replaced with anything, or rather, I want it to be replaced with nothing. I just want the character removed from the file name. I can run

rename 's/,//'

with no problem, but that only replaces the first instance of the quote in the name, so I have to run it multiple times to be sure I got everything. Even worse is something like

rename 'y/[,\']//'

where I want to remove both commas and apostrophe marks (Beatles--Honey,_Don't.ogg).

So my question is, what syntax do I have to use to remove multiple instances of a character? My eventual goal is to to create a simple 'removefilenamejunk' alias or command that I can run whenever I want to clean up a file name. Thanx.

Try rename 's/,//g', the "g" is for global and will replace all instances on the line.

"g" for global replacement

I just knew it would be something simple like that. I swear though that I'd tried the g flag sometime in my searching and had no luck. Must've done something wrong. Besides, the sed man page only gives g as:

g G Copy/append hold space to pattern space.

which doesn't sound anything like "global" replacement to me. I'm not even sure what "hold space" and "pattern space" mean, exactly.

Anyway, I learned something new. Thanks!

those you are looking at are for address ranges. For substitution, its called flags. See here ( and read the whole book if you have time )