On Tue, Nov 07, 2006 at 03:16:38PM +0000, Richard Lyons wrote: > For things like saving photos to hard disk, I tend to use a few bash scripts > to rename the files, keeping the numerical part and coding something else in > place of the "cimg". For example, I might change all the files cimg1234.jpg > to cimg1299.jpg to be called foobar234.jpg to foobar299.jpg. I tend to > modify these scripts when need arises, but the latest one shows an oddity I > cannot understand. > > The script (called prep) is inline below. It removes $1 from the beginning > of any filename in pwd and replaces it with $2, subject to a couple of > sanity checks. > > Here is the output from a test run: > -------- > richard@scatola:~/test$ ls > ohdear ohwonderful oops oopsdeardear tutdear > richard@scatola:~/test$ prep oops wer > > ... working > oops -> wer > oopsdeardear -> werdeardear > 2 renamed --all done. > > richard@scatola:~/test$ ls > ohdear ohwonderful tutdear wer? werdeardear > -------- > My question is: where did the question mark come from? It always occurs if > the whole filename is substituted. I would guess one of two things, but just a guess: 1. all file names have some invisible character at the end of them that somehow gets stripped off by your script causing this artifact or 2. maybe more likely, there is a terminator character in your string you are using to mv to and its causing the artifact. Either way, I'd look into bash docs and see how it handles strings and look for some little side-effect like that. .02 A
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