Hello,
I am new to shell scripting. I need to rename some files. Following is the format of file name I want to rename.

[ABC.DE] Album - 02 - This is the name.mp3

I want to rename this to 'This is the name.mp3'. I have lots of files of the same name format and that's why I was trying to write the script for the same. I tried using cut and sed command but I am not sure how to handle the whitespaces while using these commands.

Please reply as soon as possible.

Thanks,
Kousutbh.

Shouldn't be a problem...just put a backslash "\" in front of where the whitespace(s) are in the sed command. A backslash makes the system treat the next character as JUST a character, so things like spaces, and punctuation (!#@*, etc.), will be treated as such, and not special characters.

1 members found this post helpful.

The other option would be to read it into a loop and then quote the variables so white space is preserved.

You know, questions like this about renaming files are incredibly common, and come up with amazing regularly here and elsewhere on the web. In fact, just a quick glance at the "related threads" box at the bottom of the page will give you a few examples.

You did try doing a search or two before you submitted your post, right?

In the meantime, read through these three links so you can fully understand how the shell handles arguments and whitespace:
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Arguments
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/WordSplitting
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes

1 members found this post helpful.

cut and sed handle whitespace normally. The shell doesn't though. Just escape it if it's not in quotes.

that should do it

Thanks all for you help! It is working now

@gary185 - How does your solution solve for the OP's original question?

He asked how to move a file called :- [ABC.DE] Album - 02 - This is the name.mp3
To a file called :- This is the name.mp3

Admittedly I have not run your code but I doubt it will give this outcome?

David the H. (who of course has whitespace in his name .... ) provided good link(s).
This sort of thing is just a can of worms thanks to the shell. Way too easy to mess it up.

the real question is why you are now asking on behalf of the OP about what i wrote.
He can of course run it and see what it does and decide for himself if it was usefull.
isn't life fascinating that way ?
if you asked really for an answer there was this seemingly little understood obscure line in the OP's question.
actually i thought it WAS the actual question! somehow i doubt he needed code to actually name things "this is the name".
so i thought he needed to handle whitespace.
again
anyway what i wrote handles whitespace which can be quite proplematic in shell scripting in my opinion.
OK sure it might not do 100% what he wants. I don't even know what he wants or needs accept to figure out how to use sed to handle whitespace. I actually don't even care but that's another issue.
I gave him sed to handle whitespace.
It might be obvious to you guys but i find sed kind of confusing and figured the guy could use some help.
see he could do this tricky thing where he ran what i wrote on a dummy filename and then adjusted it.
outcome of my code
OK so i'm an idiot and i thought it was usefull but it's not. i will make sure i don't help you with any of my useless crap in the future.
LOL my file DID actually make a file named "this is the name" WOOT WOOT !!
sort of
so it doesn't do exactly what he wants
Oh no wait a minute perhaps that's up to HIM !!

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Well the answer to this is easy, your reply was at about 3am and his a bit after 4:30am ... so surprisingly I was asleep.

As to the rest of your diatribe, I will in future not ask any questions when you present an answer.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

Ok-whatever -- i get it.
havn't used this forum in quite a while but i see it hasn't changed.

the real answer to this question is that i answered because i have been using Linux on Pc's since about 1983.
my Unix experience dates back to programming on a main frame the size of a house back in the late 70's.
I also have written some programs that at times have been widely used on linux desktops.
I've built Linux from scratch like 25 times over the years.....
and i felt like helping.

But since the people on this forum still "police" the posts..
I don't know -- perhaps i'll answer a few questions again in 2030.

Linux used to be about free speech by the way -- but i see now it's just "group think"
sad.. but not worth wasting my time.
Or appearently i was wasting other peoples time LOL.

Running Linux since 1983? That's a pretty good trick!

I don't want to get too involved in debate here, but I will say that if a poster asks about one thing, then you should start by directly addressing that request, without any superfluous additions that could cause confusion. Once that's taken care of you can go on to offer additional advice or suggestions as you see fit.

Also, if you provide some code to an inexperienced user, it's just common courtesy to also provide an explanation of how it works and what it's doing. This is especially true if the code does something that deviates from the original topic in some way. "Just try it and see" is not a safe option when you're dealing with things like renaming files, and doesn't really teach the user much either.


With that said, and with the original request answered, I'm now going to add some additional advice of my own.

External tools like sed/cut/whatever are usually unnecessary here, since parameter expansion can do the same thing. Assuming that the string you want always follows the final "-" and a space, then it can be as simple as:
I'd also suggest looking around for one of the bulk renaming programs that are available for doing this kind of thing.