Re: renaming really long filenames

[Stephen Samuel <samuel@bcgreen.com>]

My solution would be something like:

for i in * ;   do  mv "./$i" "`echo ./$i | tr -d '\00-\042\173-\377<>|' `" ; done


Note: I'm deleting characters starting at 7bH, not 6fH -- 6F is in the middle
of the lower case alphabet, so  it doesn't make sense.

Other things to note:
   I'm using octal (base 8) characters in the string, not hex
   the backquote (`)  says to run the command and use the output as the
   parameter to (in this case) the 'mv' command.

   I'm using './filename' to handle the possibility of a filename starting with
   a '-' and being mistaken for an option.   './' says "in the current directory",
   so it's something of a no-op, but guarantees that the name won't start with a '-'.

   the double quotes around "./$i" make sure that spaces (and other greeblies) in the
   original filename don't get interpreted as work breaks.


Chuck Gelm wrote:
>  Howdy, Y'all:
> 
>  I have some very long filenames that I would like to shorten.
> The filenames contain 'spaces' and some characters with tics or
> apostrophes, and tildes over them.  I tried to change them from
> a console session, but I don't know how to generate those special
> characters from the keyboard...and I really don't want to type
> the long filenames anyway.  :-|
> OBTW, I have no GUI (X windows) on this computer.
> 
>  Is there a way to remove all characters < 023h && > 06fh
> from these filenames?
> 
> find - sed - mv  ???
> 
> Regards, Chuck
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