that is exactly the way I wanted to know. you are a great guy! On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Brian Cluff wrote: > \s does match any white space and is very different than /s. In my > example this is what everything means > > rename 's/:/-/' * > 0 12345678 9 > > 0 - name of program > 1 - the following should be interpreted literally by the shell > 2 - we are going to do a regular expression search and replace > 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. > 4 - The search pattern that will be searching for, in this case a colon > 5 - the seperator beween the search and replace > 6 - the pattern that we will be replacing our search matched with, in this > case a - > 7 - the end our of regular expression > 8 - stop interpreting everything literally > > 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. > > 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. > > I'm sure that's now as clear as mud. :) > > Brian Cluff > > > On 01/30/2016 12:26 PM, Michael wrote: > > 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: > > rename 's/:/-/' * > > 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. > Is that right? > > On Sat, Jan 30, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Brian Cluff wrote: > >> 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 ( >> >> http://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Regular-Expressions-Jeffrey-Friedl/dp/0596528124/ >> ) that can be bought on regular expressions. The equivalent book on >> globing would be a pamphlet. >> >> 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. >> >> 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. >> >> Brian Cluff >> >> >> On 01/30/2016 11:54 AM, Michael wrote: >> >> 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 < >> brian@snaptek.com> 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 < >>> mhgraham@crow202.org> 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~(-: >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> 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~(-: > > > --------------------------------------------------- > 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~(-: