Need a perl programer to help me out with a script...

ooagentbender · 01-24-2004, 02:24 AM

Hi, I don't know how to do system calls or program all that well in perl so I came here for help.

I have files that I need to rename in large amounts. The problem is they all have numbers in front of them and I need to get rid of these numbers and keep the rest of the name intact. here are examples of my problem.

110 blah blah.file
01 blahbla.file
73 blah bladh.file

I just need to get rid of the numbers and the whitespace after them. I figured you could do this by deleting characters in the name string until you hit a letter with the ASCII decimal equivelants but i don't know how to do that in perl and make the system calls. If anyone can help I would be very appreciative.

thank you

PS they are all in one directory.

ugenn · 01-24-2004, 08:50 AM

use a regular expression to strip the ws and digits...

if ( $filename ~= /^[0-9]+[ \t]+(.*)/ ) {
$newfilename = $1;
}

as for actually renaming, I can't remember the exact system call to use. lookup www.perldoc.com.

ooagentbender · 01-24-2004, 12:00 PM

but will that take care of multipe digit numbers at the front of the file name?

acid_kewpie · 01-24-2004, 12:19 PM

easy one liner....

Code:

for i in *; do mv $i `echo $i | sed s/^[0-9]*\ //`; done

but then that's just bash... what a divvy...

crabboy · 01-24-2004, 02:47 PM

Please do not post the same thread in more than one forum. Picking the most relevant forum and posting it once there makes it easier for other members to help you and keeps the discussion all in one place.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/rules.php

Duplicate to post in Newbie:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=137930

I'd say this belongs in Programming more than Newbie, but since you got the answer to your question in the Newbie post I'll close this one.