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sorush-r
Asked: 2012-08-14 03:46:29 +0800 CST

Rename files by regexp in command line

  • 772

I do a mistake when trying to move files from one location to another. Now all files are moved, but there is a * concatenated at the end of all names.

How do I remove all *s from end of file names in command line?

Note: I'm working with an embedded system, there is not any Internet connection. Please provide solutions with no need to install new stuff.

Thanks in advance

rename

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    There is a command called (in an excess of originality) rename, that allows you to rename files using regular expressions.

    In this case, you probably want to do:

    rename 's/\*//' files...

    Which will remove the first * character found in each filename.

    You can use rename -n to list the renames that will be performed without actually doing them if you're worried about the regex not being correct.

    • 5

  2. Ubuntu comes with the rename command which can rename files by regular expressions.

    If all your files are located in the same folder, you can simply do the following:

    rename s/\\*$// *

    (\\* is an escaped *, $ is the end of the file name. A match will be replaced with nothing.)

    If all your files are in a directory structure, you can use find:

    find / -exec rename s/\\*$// {} \;

    Which executes rename /\\*$// on every file and directory on you system. Feel free to change the / to the folder in which the directory structure is located.

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