Xfce Forum

cmcanulty

Member

From: Beulah, Michigan

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 266

remove a character from all files

I would like a script to remove a character, for example like | , [, {, ], } from all files in my home directory. I don't want to remove the files just specified characters and either replace with nothing a or something else. Sed seems to do this for individual files but I want to do a bulk rename or any files with a certain character. There may be hundreds of them. Like open a terminal in my home directory and enter a command to do that for all files. Thank you

KBar

Member

Registered: 2021-11-05

Posts: 689

Re: remove a character from all files

Are we talking about file names or file content?

For file names, there Thunar Bulk Renamer.

For file content, sed does the job. Try with the --separate option.

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cmcanulty

Member

From: Beulah, Michigan

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 266

Re: remove a character from all files

I am talking about file and directory names only not the files themselves.I have used that in the past but it only allows you to search files not directories and whenever I try to just remove a character you have to say a number from the front or end of a file so it is impossible to do several files at once as the character is in a different location in each file name. Maybe I am missing something

update I found an app called "file renamer"  and it does exactly like I want, thank you

Last edited by cmcanulty (2021-12-05 17:05:29)

Skaperen

Member

From: right by Jesus, our Saviour

Registered: 2013-06-15

Posts: 862

Re: remove a character from all files

do you have the "rename" command?  it lets you modify file names matching a regular expression.  suppose you want to remove all "_" characters from all file names in the current directory.

rename -v s/_//g *_*

the -v is to have it show what it renames.  the "g" is to have it o multiple changes in each name.  it works much like the "sed" command.

or suppose you want to change every space to the character "_".  for this the big expression argument needs to be in quotes so the shell will pass the space character to the "rename" program.

rename -v 's/ /_/g' *

even though the * will give it every file name it only makes changes on the file names that match the expression (has a space in this case).

notice:  i just typed in these commands.  i have not actually tested them.

cmcanulty

Member

From: Beulah, Michigan

Registered: 2014-05-10

Posts: 266

Re: remove a character from all files

Thanks that seems to work. To make it more useful though with my 500GB of files is there a way for it to include subfolders? Also weirdly it seems to not work with  [ ] { }

Last edited by cmcanulty (2021-12-12 13:32:21)