Quoting Renaud OLGIATI (ren...@olgiati-in-paraguay.org): > On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 11:51:26 -0500 > David Wright <deb...@lionunicorn.co.uk> wrote: > > > > > How do I get rid of the "~" so that the backups are file.1, file.2, > > > > etc.? > > > > How about using the GNU rename in the dir holding your backup files: > > > $ rename "~" "" *~* > > > Would that not be something more like > > rename 's/\.~([0-9]+)~$/.$1/' *[0-9]~ > > Which is why I stick to the GNU version of rename, and shun the perl version; > much simpler syntax.
Thanks for that comment. Though I migrated from Perl to Python a couple of decades ago, I always install the proper Perl package, so I get rename→prename rather than rename→rename.ul . Yes, rename.ul has a simpler syntax, but it's far more dangerous. Whereas I wrote *[0-9]~ for the shell pattern where * would have sufficed (because Perl's pattern is so specific), _your_ shell pattern needs to be even more specific than *[0-9]~ (needing to match the .~ and therefore multiple digits too). As it is, you will clobber the first ~ irrespective of its position. You'll then need a second pass because rename.ul only replaces one occurrence of ~. And woe betide any files like foo.2 already present: rename.ul will silently overwrite it with any of foo.2~ foo.~2 or even ~foo.2 that get renamed. In fact while testing this, I accidently stumbled on the bizarre case where the set of files: 0 Jan 1 2011 ~foo.2 220 Jan 1 2010 foo.2 0 Jan 1 2012 foo.~2 850 Jan 1 2013 foo.~2~ 0 Jan 1 2014 foo.2~ is reduced to 850 Jan 1 2013 foo.2 by a single application of rename.ul "~" "" *~* and the "correct" one wins! Anyway, checkout the man page and heed the warning. Meanwhile I shall cultivate the habit of typing "prename", like with rm -i and mv -i. And I've edited the single occurrence of a bare rename in my .bashrc, though I don't think any filenames would accidentally match "tr/A-Z/a-z/;s/[),(\`\'’\"]/ /g;s/ / /g;s/ /-/g;s/--/-/g;s/^-//g;s/-$//g" except as a Perl pattern. Cheers, David. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150716193339.GC9663@alum
