You don't need a script, you can do that with: rename "EOS-1D Mark III copy" "" *.jpg That removes "EOS-1D Mark III copy" from all files ending in .jpg, assuming they are all in one directory. Thanks, Jarek Sedlacek On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 6:13 PM, pete wrote:

Hi folks

Bit sort of off topic but hopefully ok

I have some 350 picture files with names along the lines of "IMG_7127 EOS-1D Mark III copy.jpg" i would like to rename them all to more like "IMG_7127.jpg" i have tried a few times tonight and cant get my head around it anyone got a script that can do it

Thanks Pete .

-- Linux 7-of-9 3.2.8-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Feb 27 21:51:46 CET 2012 x86_64 AMD Phenom(tm) 9600B Quad-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

On 01-03-2012 23:13, pete wrote:

Hi folks

Bit sort of off topic but hopefully ok

I have some 350 picture files with names along the lines of "IMG_7127 EOS-1D Mark III copy.jpg" i would like to rename them all to more like "IMG_7127.jpg" i have tried a few times tonight and cant get my head around it anyone got a script that can do it

Thanks Pete .

Assuming you don't mind bash scripts, maybe something like: IF=$'\n? for file in *.jpg do mv "$file" "$(echo $file | cut -f1 -d\ )".jpg done -- Mauro Santos

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 8:13 PM, pete wrote:

I have some 350 picture files  with names  along the lines of "IMG_7127 EOS-1D Mark III copy.jpg"    i would like to rename them all to more like "IMG_7127.jpg"  i have tried a few times tonight and cant get my head around it anyone got a script that can do it

I like using vim for those tasks because of the interactivity (I fear my dirty little scripts will go rogue and ruin all my files...) Here's how it works: $ ls | vim - Then I get in vim one line per filename (unless there's a file with a \n in its name, wich there never will be on my system!) I use some vim commands to get something like (usualy something with :%s/foo/bar) ... mv "IMG_7127 EOS-1D Mark III copy.jpg" "IMG_7127.jpg" mv "IMG_7128 EOS-1D Mark III copy.jpg" "IMG_7128.jpg" ... Then I triple check if everything is OK (did I mention I'm paranoid?) And finaly :w !sh To make vim execute the whole file as a sh script. Done.

pete writes:

Hi folks

Bit sort of off topic but hopefully ok

I have some 350 picture files with names along the lines of "IMG_7127 EOS-1D Mark III copy.jpg" i would like to rename them all to more like "IMG_7127.jpg" i have tried a few times tonight and cant get my head around it anyone got a script that can do it

Install `moreutils' from [community], and use `vidir'. Otherwise, if you use Emacs, then C-x C-q in dired does that in the Emacs way. -- Carl Lei (XeCycle) Department of Physics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University OpenPGP public key: 7795E591 Fingerprint: 1FB6 7F1F D45D F681 C845 27F7 8D71 8EC4 7795 E591

Il 02 marzo 2012 00:13, pete ha scritto:

I have some 350 picture files  with names  along the lines of "IMG_7127 EOS-1D Mark III copy.jpg"    i would like to rename them all to more like "IMG_7127.jpg"  i have tried a few times tonight and cant get my head around it anyone got a script that can do it

There have been lots of good suggestion. I put on the plate "detox": https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=7130 Its purpose is eliminating from filenames charachters that make them difficult to work with, so it's also good for files *beginning* with a space, esoteric utf8 characters, escape codes, parentheses and whatever. It's kind of overkill for this, but it deserves to be mentioned :-) C