The more I look at sed & awk, the more confused I become. I can't seem to get my hands around it. It appears to be a powerful tool for editing, but it appears you can really screw stuff up and irreparably damage your work. The process may even be a multi step process. I would not mind doing it by hand, but there are hundreds of files. Just not sure how to start

I would like them to have a similar structure like the following file:
ShopNotes #001 - Shop Built Router Table.pdf <== Shop & Notes are capitalized & has a three digit numeric.
The Art Of Woodworking #013 - Wood Turning.pdf
Woodworking Plans - Boat Plans – Canoe.pdf
Fine Woodworking - Built-In Furniture.pdf

The sample of files that need conversion:
Shopnotes #05 - Turned Tool Handles.pdf <== two digit numerice and notes is not capitalized
ShopNotes #106 Understanding Lumber _ Plywood.pdf <== has the underscore in the name
Woodworking - ShopNotes #62 - Box Joint Jig.pdf <<==Woodworking leads in.
The Art Of Woodworking Vol 19 - Advanced Routing.pdf
Woodworking _Plans_ Bending.Wood.pdf

also, show any that error out because duplicates are found.

For the life of me, I can't detect any systematic pattern in what you are trying to do. If you can't state the particular systematic pattern change you want to accomplish, you will never be able to do the manipulation with those tools.

You might want to look at the kde application, krename. It's a very powerful graphical file renaming utility that can use, among other things, regular expressions, which is probably what you need. With krename, you can also preview how the changes will look before they are made so you can avoid doing something you don't want to do.

Thanks. I guess a multi step process is indeed in order.

what do you think about this?

Then the first step for me then is to make sure any with a lower case “Shopnotes” be capitalized to “ShopNotes” then have any with a two digit number add a leading zero “0”

so that

Shopnotes #05 - Turned Tool Handles.pdf

becomes

ShopNotes #05 - Turned Tool Handles.pdf

then add the leading 0 so then I am left with

ShopNotes #005 - Turned Tool Handles.pdf

Then I would want to strip off “Woodworking - “ from other files so that they have both “Woodworking” & any convention of “ShopNotes”. Hopefully, this will keep other files from being targeted.

Woodworking - ShopNotes #056 - Circular Saw Miter Station.pdf

becomes

ShopNotes #056 - Circular Saw Miter Station.pdf