Bash – replace spaces with underscore but replace multiple spaces with one

filenamesregular expressionrename

I use rename to underscore spaces in filenames, simply with:

rename "s/ /_/g" *

but I encounter the problem that files downloaded from the internet often have multiple spaces. A nasty workaround I used (but works only for 3 spaces which in most cases is enough), but there has to be a more elegant approach than:

rename "s/   /_/g" *; rename "s/  /_/g" *; rename "s/ /_/g" *

Best Answer

The following worked for me:

rename 's/\s+/_/g' *

It will match one to unlimited instances of white space

Note this would also work for newlines and tabs, however based on your use case I think that would be preferable and not unwanted? But to match only space specifically you could do:

rename 's/ +/_/g' *

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Remove Duplicate Files on OSX Using Find and Regular Expressions

Something like this, haven't tested; it's in bash so you may have to convert some syntax:

IFS=$'\n'              # so that only newlines separate words, not spaces
set -f                 # disable globbing
FILES=$(find path/to/music/ -name "* 1.*")

for FILE in ${FILES}; do
    if [[ -f "${FILE% 1.*}" ]] ; do
        echo "Matched ${FILE}."
        # rm "${FILE}" # Uncomment me once you have confirmed it would do what you intend.
    fi
done

${FILE% 1.*} strips the last match of the 1.* syntax from the end, [[ -f ... ]] checks whether that file would exist; therefore, it would remove the files for which the file without the syntax at the end would exist. Please test before uncommenting rm, to be sure it is correct.

Bash – Strategy to extract movies’s name from this ununiform dataset

Using gawk and assuming that the year always ends the record:

awk -F"[0-9]{4}$" '{print $1}' movies

Best Answer

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