Hi Keith,
> So, after all that, my question is: why did you restrict the answers
> you wanted to bash (I'm not criticising that restriction, but I am
> curious)?
Terry's replied, but as a *Unix* programmer my natural inclination would
still be to first wonder if it could be done in the shell without
needing a custom program. The shell offers such high-level tools with
I/O redirection allowing them to be easily combined, e.g. pipelines,
that "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts".
It's quicker for me to cogitate and play around a bit to come up with
find -depth -print0 |
xargs -r0 prename -n '1 while s#'\''([^/]*)$#$1#'
and verify it covers my particular files than it is to write
#! /usr/bin/python
import os
def scan(cur):
for entry in os.listdir(cur):
path = os.path.join(cur, entry)
if os.path.isdir(path):
scan(path)
new = entry.replace("'", '')
if new != entry:
new = os.path.join(cur, new)
if os.path.lexists(new):
raise SystemExit, 'refusing to overwrite %s with %s' %
(new, path)
print path, '->', new
os.rename(path, new)
scan('.')
The length of what needs to be written is part of it; not just the
typing but the inspection. The shell's higher-level concepts give
brevity.
The shell isn't always the right fit and, as you say, filenames are a
pain if they can contain anything, but for ad hoc local use where it can
be determined that's not a problem the shell can be quick and easy.
Cheers, Ralph.
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