How to call the “happy-dog” part of file “happy-dog.png”

basenamefilenamesfilesterminology

I just realized I don't know how file is called in file.ext.

The whole file.ext is called a file or filename, ext is called extension but how do you call the file part itself of file.ext?

For example happy-dog.png. All the file/filename is happy-dog.png, extension is png but how do you call happy-dog?

It's not basename. Is it like titlename? Or filepart? Any ideas?

Best Answer

I doubt there is a stable terminology here. A small googling exposes people utilize base name for this, but this usage conflicts with the same term used as "full file name without path". For example, https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2183486/ exposes the case when "filename" is "basename" plus "extension".

OTOH, the term "extension" you use is weird. It's originated in CP-M/Dos/Windows world (distorting imitation of RSX-11/RT-11 approach) where a file name could (before Windows 95) have a single part after dot. In Unix world, this was named "suffix" from the very beginning, and I would strongly suggest you using this term. The difference is that multiple suffixes can exist - for example, a.o.d is dependency list for a.o. In turn, if this is suffix, the part before suffixes is a filename root. In my opinion, there is too small chance to get it conflicting with "root" as Unix superuser.

UPD: linguistics often use "stem" in a vast sense "part before ending and, sometimes, before suffix". But I see mention for "root" in neighbor reply, so, seems "root" is good until you need further distinction.

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Bash shell script to locate and remove substring within a filename

Try this:

newname=`echo "$filename" | sed -e 's/\(S[0-9][0-9]E[0-9][0-9]\).*\.mp4/\1.mp4/'`

The regular expression is:

start a group ( \( )
match SXXEXX where X is a numeral between 0 and 9
end group ( \) )
match any number of any character (except a newline)
match a explicit string ( .mp4 )

In the replacement expression:

replace with string matched in first group ( \1 )
replace with explicit string ( .mp4 )

Create File with Empty Name – How to Do It

It is not possible to have a file with an empty name. What you have is a file whose name entirely consists of blank or non-printable characters.

To see exactly what the file name is, run LC_CTYPE=C ls -b. This replaces all blank or non-printable characters by octal escapes. For example, a file whose name is a single zero-width space would be listed as \342\200\213.

You can isolate this file with a glob that excludes files with a nice name. For example, you could try listing the files whose name doesn't begin with a letter.

chaouche@karabeela /mnt/ubuntu/storage $ ls -d [^A-Za-z]*

Don't forget the option -d, so that ls lists the directory itself and not its contents.

You should rename the file to have a reasonable name. You can rely on your shell's completion, or use a glob that matches only this file.

mv [^A-Za-z]* windows-programs

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash shell script to locate and remove substring within a filename

Create File with Empty Name – How to Do It

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