On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 7:02 AM, Kenneth Gonsalves <[email protected]> wrote: > hi, > > I had a file 'filename 04 april v3.pdf' - I tried to copy it to another > directory, but cp refused to oblige. I managed to generate the command by > typing 'filename\' and pressing tab key. That is as far as I could go. I > finally > had to go back to kmail and save the file in the correct directory. > --
Very typical of Windoze/Winblows generated files. Unfortunately even mp3 players and handhelds seem to have similar issues. It is so hard to deal with spaces in file names in UNIX but other OSes happily create such files to make our lives hard. In fact your question is not quite clear to me. You can use backslash before every space. For instance, you can do filename\ 04\ april\ v3.pdf In case you want to replace all filenames in toto please use the mmv command. I ran a tip on this very long ago. Please search the archives. http://ae.iitm.ac.in/pipermail/ilugc $ touch 'filename 04 apr v3.pdf' $ touch 'foo 05 nov v4.pdf' $ mmv -v "*[ ]*[ ]*[ ]*.pdf" "#1-#5-#7.pdf" filename 04 apr v3.pdf -> filename-apr-v3.pdf : done foo 05 nov v4.pdf -> foo-nov-v4.pdf : done Or you could use tr ' ' '-' if you wish to replace with '-'. You can also choose to do it with some other char like underscore or even a letter. for i in * do newname=`echo $i | tr ' ' '-' ` echo $newname mv "$i" $newname done I tried it and this works. -Girish -- Gayatri Hitech web: http://gayatri-hitech.com SpamCheetah Spam filter: http://spam-cheetah.com _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc
