thank you Brian. Does anyone happen to know of a perl regexr list. I found one but am not sure if it is right: http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/perl/regexp.html On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Brian Cluff wrote: > 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 -. > At best your command will error out, at worst it will overwrite an > existing file. > 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. > > With rename all you have to do is: > rename 's/:/-/' * > > 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 :. > > 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. > 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. > > Brian Cluff > > > > On 01/30/2016 08:29 AM, Michael wrote: > > I'm sure that will fix it but what am I doing wrong in my attempts to > rename them? > > $ mv *:* *=* > mv: target ‘*=*’ is not a directory > $ mv *:* *-* > mv: target ‘darktable-1:9Download’ is not a directory > $ mv *:* ./*-* > mv: target ‘./darktable-1:9Download’ is not a directory > > > On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 10:29 AM, Matt Graham > wrote: > >> On Fri, Jan 29, 2016 at 6:45 PM, Michael < >> bmike1@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> the filesystem is probably FAT because it is a thumb drive.... >>> rsync: mkstemp >>> "/media/bmike1/RedSanDisk/Documents/Education/Darktable/.darktable-1:10WaterLilyEdit.CccL3o" >>> failed: Invalid argument (22) >>> >> >> 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. >> >> 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. >> >> -- >> Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress >> There is no Darkness in Eternity >> But only Light too dim for us to see. >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > > > > -- > :-)~MIKE~(-: > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > > > > --------------------------------------------------- > PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.phxlinux.org > To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: > http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss > -- :-)~MIKE~(-: