rename appears useless in Ubuntu

[anthony baldwin]

Heike C. Zimmerer wrote:
> anthony baldwin <baldwinlinguas at gmail.com> writes:
> 
> Some comments:
>> #!/bin/bash
>>
>> # nospace
>> # replace spaces with underscores
>>
>> echo "What kind of files do you wish to rename.  Please enter the file 
>> extension:"
>>
>> read a
>>
>> for i in $(ls -1 *$a)
> 
> You don't use your variable i anywhere later.  The whole loop is
> pointless.  It would not even work if the variable i were used, since
> $(ls -1 $a) splits the string at every white space, you won't get
> filenames containing spaces through it.  



Ah, but it DOES work, young paduan.
It does precisely what I want (or did in PCLOS, now, in ubuntu, I have
learned that I must use rename.ul rather than plain rename (which should 
be prename), and it still works).

A working version would be
> 
>   for i in *."$a"
> 
> Now:
> 
>> do
>> rename \  _ *.$a
> 
> With the for clause adjusted as depicted above, use
> 
>   mv "$i" "${i// /_}"
> 
> here, and you should be done (not tested).  As you wrote it, the rename
> command is called many times with the first call doing the real work and
> getting all the file names as arguments (*.$a), and the remaining calls
> being useless (but doing no harm) since there a no spaces in file names
> any more.

The first time, it removes the first space in each file name,
then the second, etc.
If I run it without the loop, it only removes the first space.

/tony


-- 
http://www.baldwinlinguas.com
tcl me...I like it like that!