removing 8th and 9th character of a FILENAME

UNIX AIX
1

Hi everyone,

I have a file called pdf.txt which has the following list inside:

7110412_1_31122012.pdf
7286510_4_46667100.pdf
4002176_1_00018824.pdf
...

I need a looping script to REMOVE the 8th and 9th character of the filenames listed, no matter what character that is.

So example:

7110412_1_31122012.pdf
will be
7110412_31122012.pdf
(_1 was deleted)

I did the following but it hangs:

for file in `cat pdf.txt`
do
r=$(echo $file | cut -c 8-9)
new=$(tr -d "$r")
mv "$file" "$new"
done

Please help, thanks!

2 
cut -c1-7 -c10- pdf.txt > newpdf.txt
3

thanks for the quick response pseudocoder, however,

the listed files are really filenames located say, on /home/apps/pdf2010 directory.. i need to change the filename (with the format i mentioned above) that are in that directory by removing the 8th and 9th char

sorry for the confusion

4

All right, try this, directly in the target directory:

$ for i in *.pdf
do
j=$(echo "$i" | cut -c1-7 -c10-)
mv "$i" "$j"
done

Please make a backup of your original files before you run this, just for the case that something goes wrong :wink:

5

actually i tweaked it a little to work:

for i in *.pdf
do
j=$(echo "$i" | cut -c1-7,10-)
mv "$i" "$j"
done

thanks a lot pseudocoder! :):):slight_smile: