The -exec option variant for find that ends with ';' rather than + lets you use {} more freely, and then perhaps the following would work

find . -type f -name '[0-9][0-9] - *' \
    -exec sh -c "file-rename -v 's/^[0-9][0-9]\s-\s//' '{}'" ';'

That proposal causes 3 times a: "1: Syntax error: Unterminated quoted string". Tried to fix this, but failed. No idea what exactly caused that to fail. Fiddeled with the quotes around the {}, the ; and the file-rename string.

and this one does the job! Thank you, never would have got that together. This line also works on both ways a ' is quoted in the file names on the terminal line:

"Chris Rea - Let's Dance.wav"
'Dr. Hook & The Medicine Show - Sylvia'\''s Mother.wav'

Again, many thanks for this solution.

rolfie

for file in * ; do mv "$file" "${file#*- }" ; done

EDIT: see section 2.6.2 of the POSIX sh command language guide for an explanation.

find . -type f -name '[0-9][0-9] - *' \
    -exec sh -c "file-rename -v 's/^[0-9][0-9]\s-\s//' '{}'" ';'

or almost certainly (and with less python):

find . -type f -name '[0-9][0-9] - *' \
    -exec sh -c 'X="{}"; mv "{}" "${X#*- }"' ';'

EDIT: added the missing *

would this work for ya?

http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/01/12/ … using-sed/

Or if you would like a GUI , I use gprename all the time, with gprename you may need to also install ssed as for some reason it doesn't get pulled automatically

Well, different approach. I first want to try if I can get my approach to work. Thank you anyway.

rolfie

find . -type f -name '[0-9][0-9] - *' -exec file-rename -v 's/^[0-9][0-9]\s-\s//' {} +

A direct

file-rename -v 's/^[0-9][0-9]\s-\s//' '01 - Canned Heat - On The Road Again.wav'

renames the file as desired. So I have a problem with the hand-over of the filenames from find to file-rename. And here I am stuck. I have too little insight into this topic.

rolfie

http://www.guyrutenberg.com/2009/01/12/ … using-sed/

Or if you would like a GUI , I use gprename all the time, with gprename you may need to also install ssed as for some reason it doesn't get pulled automatically

01 - Canned Heat - On The Road Again.wav

My goal is to remove the track number from the file name for all files having this in the current directory. Example:

Canned Heat - On The Road Again.wav

From digging through man pages and several threads on many forums, I finally came up with this approach:

find . -type f -name '[0-9][0-9] - *' -exec rename 's/^[0-9][0-9] - //' {} +

The find part works, with the -print option it lists all the files in the test directory I have set up. The rename part has a problem, and I can't figure out what's wrong. I have learned that compared to Debian the rename utility isn't part of the util-linux package but a perl application that has to be installed separately. How is the relation between regex and a perl-expression?

In any case, above line in a script does not seem to do anything, the script terminates without action, output or error. What ido I need to change?

rolfie