Strip part from filename

UNIX for Beginners Q & A UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers
1

I've many file like this

01-file
01_-_file
01_-_file
01_-_file
01_-_file
01-file

I would remove bold part from filename. Suggestions?Thanks

2

The sed command gives the command to move the files. The output is piped to sh to execute the command. Check the output first without the coloured part:

sed 's/.*[-_]\(.*\)/mv & \1/' | sh

Regards

3

Thanks for this quick answer. Can you explain me in detail what sed do in this case?I know sed for is basic function, substitution only. I like to understand this complex command.

4

To understand the command you must have some basic knowledge of sed, but here we go:

sed 's/.*[-_]\(.*\)/mv & \1/'

With sed you can save substrings with \(.*\) and recall them back with \1, \2, \3 etc.

Here we saved a portion \(.*\) after the regular expression:

.*[-_]

This regexp means one or more characters ending with a "-" or "" so the saved portion \(.*\) contains the characters after the last "-" or ""

We substitute the string matched by the regular expression with:

mv & \1

& is a character with a special meaning and is replaced with the string matched by the regular expression.

\1 is the recalling of the saved portion \(.*\)

Regards

5

many many thanks!!