How to delete a character.

chrism01 · 07-09-2012, 07:27 PM

Have you considered the printf cmd?
http://ss64.com/bash/printf.html

pixellany · 07-09-2012, 08:09 PM

What have you tried?

Here's a quick guess at a crude solution:
Assume that we're always dealing with just numbers, and there is always at least one digit and not more than four.
So, the allowable filenames include:
9
23
456
2345
09
034
0231
0002

I put this in a file called "numpad"

First, use this to add 3 zeros to each one:

Code:

[mherring@herring_desk ~]$ sed 's/.*/000&/' numpad
0009
00023
000456
0002345
00009
000034
0000231
0000002

now, we use sed to truncate to the last 4 characters:

Code:

[mherring@herring_desk ~]$ sed 's/.*/000&/' numpad | sed -r 's/.*(.{4})$/\1/'
0009
0023
0456
2345
0009
0034
0231
0002

As I said, crude. Wait awhile and someone will have something a bit more elegant.

pixellany · 07-09-2012, 08:10 PM

OOOOOOps---the better answer was already there----but it's good to know that SED will do it....

rosehosting.com · 07-09-2012, 08:26 PM

Using printf

Code:

for i in *; do
  j=$(printf %04d $i)
  [ $i != $j ] && mv $i $j
done