<div dir="ltr">that is exactly the way I wanted to know. you are a great guy!</div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Brian Cluff <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brian@snaptek.com" target="_blank">brian@snaptek.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
  
    
  
  <div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
    \s does match any white space and is very different than /s.  In my
    example this is what everything means<br>
    <pre><span style="font-size:12.8px">rename 's/:/-/' *
0      12345678 9
</span></pre>
    0 - name of program<br>
    1 - the following should be interpreted literally by the shell<br>
    2 - we are going to do a regular expression search and replace<br>
    3 - Regular expression start character (you can actually change this
    to any character you like in your regular expression is going to
    contain slashes (/), but stick with / to begin with.<br>
    4 - The search pattern that will be searching for, in this case a
    colon<br>
    5 - the seperator beween the search and replace<br>
    6 - the pattern that we will be replacing our search matched with,
    in this case a -<br>
    7 - the end our of regular expression<br>
    8 - stop interpreting everything literally<br>
    <br>
    There are options that you can add after the last / that can make
    your regular expression case insensitive (i) or make it work more
    than once on the same line (g)...etc.etc.. but there aren't any in
    this case as they aren't needed.<br>
    <br>
    9 - this star is now shell globing and makes the command operate on
    all the files in the current directory.  In your case it would
    probably be better to do *:* so that it only touches files with a :
    in their names, so that you limit the damage if you get something
    wrong.<br>
    <br>
    I'm sure that's now as clear as mud. :)<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
    <br>
    Brian Cluff</font></span><div><div class="h5"><br>
    <br>
    <div>On 01/30/2016 12:26 PM, Michael wrote:<br>
    </div>
    <blockquote type="cite">
      <div dir="ltr">you know... the reason I was doubting that page is
        because it says that  \s matches any white space and in the
        example that worked:
        <div><br>
        </div>
        <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">rename 's/:/-/' *</span><br style="font-size:12.8px">
        </div>
        <div><span style="font-size:12.8px"><br>
          </span></div>
        <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">looks to me as if it is
            saying to search for a blank space followed by a colon and
            then (i guess) the next forward slash tells it to replace it
            with a dash. Then the final '\' closes the statement and
            that too is a tatement surrounded by apostrapheses.</span><br>
        </div>
        <div><span style="font-size:12.8px">Is that right?</span></div>
      </div>
      <div class="gmail_extra"><br>
        <div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Brian
          Cluff <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brian@snaptek.com" target="_blank">brian@snaptek.com</a>></span>
          wrote:<br>
          <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
            <div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> Regular expressions
              is a pretty big topic.  It's not super easy like globing
              (like the * you've been using in bash) which you can get
              the idea from the 544 page book ( <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Regular-Expressions-Jeffrey-Friedl/dp/0596528124/" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Regular-Expressions-Jeffrey-Friedl/dp/0596528124/" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Regular-Expressions-Jeffrey-Friedl/dp/0596528124/</a>
              ) that can be bought on regular expressions.  The
              equivalent book on globing would be a pamphlet. <br>
              <br>
              That being said, the basics aren't too hard to learn, but
              you have to keep in mind that they are fairly different,
              and don't always act like what you would think.<br>
              <br>
              There are a ton of howtos out there and they take a lot of
              different approaches to explaining thing, I would just
              search google for them until you find one that speaks to
              you.<span><font color="#888888"><br>
                  <br>
                  Brian Cluff</font></span>
              <div>
                <div><br>
                  <br>
                  <div>On 01/30/2016 11:54 AM, Michael wrote:<br>
                  </div>
                  <blockquote type="cite">
                    <div dir="ltr">thank you Brian. Does anyone happen
                      to know of a perl regexr list. I found one but am
                      not sure if it is right: <a href="http://www.cs.tut.fi/%7Ejkorpela/perl/regexp.html" target="_blank">http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/perl/regexp.html</a></div>
                    <div class="gmail_extra"><br>
                      <div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at
                        11:43 AM, Brian Cluff <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:brian@snaptek.com" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:brian@snaptek.com" target="_blank">brian@snaptek.com</a>></span>
                        wrote:<br>
                        <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
                          <div text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF"> You
                            can't rename files that way.  The * on the
                            command line gets turned into real file
                            names by bash before they are ever given to
                            the mv command so you are tell the command
                            line to consist of any files with a :
                            followed by any files with an = or -.<br>
                            At best your command will error out, at
                            worst it will overwrite an existing file.<br>
                            What you are needing is a program that can
                            take a pattern and rename files with a
                            different pattern.  There are 2 that I've
                            used, mmv and rename.  Of the 2, you
                            probably have rename on your system already
                            since it gets pulled in with PERL.  If not,
                            just install the rename package.<br>
                            <br>
                            With rename all you have to do is:<br>
                            rename 's/:/-/' *<br>
                            <br>
                            That will use a regular expression to change
                            all the files in the current directory that
                            contain a : in their name to the same name
                            with a - replacing the :.<br>
                            <br>
                            Be very very careful with the rename
                            command, it can and will clobber every file
                            that it touches before you know it just
                            because you got a single character out of
                            place.<br>
                            When in doubt add the -n option so that it
                            will tell you what it's going to do without
                            actually doing it.  Then if everything looks
                            good, run the command again without the -n
                            to actually make the changes.<span><font color="#888888"><br>
                                <br>
                                Brian Cluff</font></span>
                            <div>
                              <div><br>
                                <br>
                                <br>
                                <div>On 01/30/2016 08:29 AM, Michael
                                  wrote:<br>
                                </div>
                                <blockquote type="cite">
                                  <div dir="ltr">I'm sure that will fix
                                    it but what am I doing wrong in my
                                    attempts to rename them?
                                    <div><br>
                                    </div>
                                    <div>
                                      <div>$ mv *:* *=*</div>
                                      <div>mv: target ‘*=*’ is not a
                                        directory</div>
                                      <div>$ mv *:* *-*</div>
                                      <div>mv: target
                                        ‘darktable-1:9Download’ is not a
                                        directory</div>
                                      <div>$ mv *:* ./*-*</div>
                                      <div>mv: target
                                        ‘./darktable-1:9Download’ is not
                                        a directory</div>
                                      <div><br>
                                      </div>
                                    </div>
                                  </div>
                                  <div class="gmail_extra"><br>
                                    <div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Jan
                                      30, 2016 at 10:29 AM, Matt Graham
                                      <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mhgraham@crow202.org" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:mhgraham@crow202.org" target="_blank">mhgraham@crow202.org</a>></span>
                                      wrote:<br>
                                      <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span>On
                                          Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 6:45 PM,
                                          Michael <<a href="mailto:bmike1@gmail.com" target="_blank"></a><a href="mailto:bmike1@gmail.com" target="_blank">bmike1@gmail.com</a>>

                                          wrote:<br>
                                        </span>
                                        <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span>
                                            the filesystem is probably
                                            FAT because it is a thumb
                                            drive....<br>
                                          </span><span> rsync: mkstemp
                                            "/media/bmike1/RedSanDisk/Documents/Education/Darktable/.darktable-1:10WaterLilyEdit.CccL3o"


                                            failed: Invalid argument
                                            (22)<br>
                                          </span></blockquote>
                                        <br>
                                        It is not possible to have a ':'
                                        character in a filename on a
                                        FAT-based filesystem.  This is
                                        because that character was used
                                        to denote which disk drive a
                                        file was on back in the DOS
                                        days... "C:\junk\stuff.txt" and
                                        so forth.<br>
                                        <br>
                                        I am not sure what these hidden
                                        files contain, or whether
                                        they're actually important.  You
                                        can pass the "--exclude *\:*"
                                        option to rsync to tell it to
                                        not try to transfer files that
                                        contain ':' characters, which
                                        may help.<span><font color="#888888"><br>
                                            <br>
                                            -- <br>
                                            Crow202 Blog: <a href="http://crow202.org/wordpress" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"></a><a href="http://crow202.org/wordpress" target="_blank">http://crow202.org/wordpress</a><br>
                                            There is no Darkness in
                                            Eternity<br>
                                            But only Light too dim for
                                            us to see.</font></span>
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                                      </blockquote>
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                                    <div><br>
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