remove certain characters from file name

[Ratzie]

I have a directory that has about 200 files, I need to go thru and remove any " - " (dash) from the files, how can I do this.

[Mel Burslan · Accepted solution]

for file in `ls -1`
do
newname=`echo $file | sed -e "1,1s/-//g"`
mv $file $newname
done

[Ratzie]

Better yet, how about just removing the first - it sees in the filename

[Mel Burslan]

Actually,

for file in `ls -1 *-*`
do
newname=`echo $file | sed -e "1,1s/-//g"`
mv $file $newname
done

is better as the first version will complain for the files without dashes in their names, although it will do the job as well.

[Mel Burslan]

to remove the first occurance of "-" just drop the "g" at the end of the sed directive as such:

for file in `ls -1 *-*`
do
newname=`echo $file | sed -e "1,1s/-//"`
mv $file $newname
done

[Sandman!]

To remove the first occurence of "dash" in the filename you could use the awk construct below:

# ls *-* | awk -F"-" '{x=$0;sub("-","",$0);system("mv "x" "$0)}'

[Sandman!]

To remove all occurences of "dash" in a filename here's a slightly modified version of the awk construct posted previously:

# ls *-* | awk -F"-" '{x=$0;gsub("-","");system("mv "x" "$0)}'

[Muthukumar_5]

You can do it as,

cd
for file in `find . -type f`
do

mv $file $(echo $file | tr -d '-')

done

hth.

[Ratzie]

This is all good, but I have spaces in my file names, so it trys to do it per word...

[Tim Nelson]

you can change your IFS to something else i.e. | or ,

Make sure you change it back or only set for your session.

[Tim Nelson]

Another thought. you can use the same SED commands to replace the space with \space

Worth a try.

[john korterman]

or you can use Mel's suggestion - remember to use plenty of qoutes, e.g.:

for file in "`ls -1 *-*`"
do
newname=`echo "$file" | sed -e "1,1s/-//g"`
mv "$file" "$newname"
done

regards,
John K.

[Mel Burslan]

to remove all the dashes

ls -1 *-* | while read file
do
newname=`echo "$file" | sed -e "1,1s/-//g"`
mv "$file" "$newname"
done

to remove the first occurance of dash

ls -1 *-* | while read file
do
newname=`echo "$file" | sed -e "1,1s/-//"`
mv "$file" "$newname"
done

[TwoProc]

This one works in sh, ksh.

IFS="|"
for i in *; do mv $i ${i/-/}; done
unset IFS

[TwoProc]

The above one works with file names that have spaces in the file name (forgot to mention that).

[Sandman!]

To remove all dashes from a filename that has spaces too use the awk construct below. This won't remove spaces from a filename, only dashes:

# ls *-*\ * | awk '{x=$0;gsub(" ","\ ");gsub("-","");gsub(" ","\ ",x);system("mv "x" "$0)}'

awk construct below to remove the first "dash" from a filename that has spaces. Again, this won't remove spaces from a filename, only the first dash:

# ls *-*\ * | awk '{x=$0;gsub(" ","\ ");sub("-","");gsub(" ","\ ",x);system("mv "x" "$0)}'

cheers!

[Ratzie]

Thanks for all the help