sed command to fix filenames in a directory - bash

Question

I run a script which generated about 10k files in a directory. I just discovered that there is a bug in the script which causes some filenames to have a carriage return (presumably a '\n' character).
I want to run a sed command to remove the carriage return from the filenames.
Anyone knows which params to pass to sed to clean up the filenames in the manner described?
I am running Linux (Ubuntu)

Answer 1

I don't know how sed would do this, but this python script should do the trick:.
This isn't sed, but I find python a lot easier to use when doing things like these:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
files = os.listdir('.')
for file in files:
os.rename(file, file.replace('\r', '').replace('\n', ''))
print 'Processed ' + file.replace('\r', '').replace('\n', '')
It strips any occurrences of both \r and \n from all of the filenames in a given directory.
To run it, save it somewhere, cd into your target directory (with the files to be processed), and run python /path/to/the/file.py.
Also, if you plan on doing more batch renaming, consider Métamorphose. It's a really nice and powerful GUI for this stuff. And, it's free!
Good luck!
Actually, try this: cd into the directory, type in python, and then just paste this in:
exec("import os\nfor file in os.listdir('.'):\n os.rename(file, file.replace('\\r', '').replace('\\n', ''))\n print 'Processed ' + file.replace('\\r', '').replace('\\n', '')")
It's a one-line version of the previous script, and you don't have to save it.
Version 2, with space replacement powers:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
for file in os.listdir('.'):
os.rename(file, file.replace('\r', '').replace('\n', '').replace(' ', '_')
print 'Processed ' + file.replace('\r', '').replace('\n', '')
And here's the one-liner:
exec("import os\nfor file in os.listdir('.'):\n os.rename(file, file.replace('\\r', '').replace('\\n', '')replace(' ', '_'))\n print 'Processed ' + file.replace('\\r', '').replace('\\n', '');")

Answer 2

If there are no spaces in your filenames, you can do:
for f in *$'\n'; do mv "$f" $f; done
It won't work if the newlines are embedded, but it will work for trailing newlines.
If you must use sed:
for f in *$'\n'; do mv "$f" "$(echo "$f" | sed '/^$/d')"; done
Using the rename Perl script:
rename 's/\n//g' *$'\n'
or the util-linux-ng utility:
rename $'\n' '' *$'\n'
If the character is a return instead of a newline, change the \n or ^$ to \r in any places they appear above.

Answer 3

The reason you aren't getting any pure-sed answers is that fundamentally sed edits file contents, not file names; thus the answers that use sed all do something like echo the filename into a pipe (pseudo file), edit that with sed, then use mv to turn that back into a filename.
Since sed is out, here's a pure-bash version to add to the Perl, Python, etc scripts you have so far:
killpattern=$'[\r\n]' # remove both carriage returns and linefeeds
for f in *; do
if [[ "$f" == *$killpattern* ]]; then
mv "$f" "${f//$killpattern/}"
fi
done
...but since ${var//pattern/replacement} isn't available in plain sh (along with [[...]]), here's a version using sh-only syntax, and tr to do the character replacement:
for f in *; do
new="$(printf %s "$f" | tr -d "\r\n")"
if [ "$f" != "$new" ]; then
mv "$f" "$new"
fi
done

Answer 4

EDIT: If you really want it with sed, take a look at this:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/merge-lines-in-a-file-using-sed-191121/
Something along these lines should work similar to the perl below:
for i in *; do echo mv "$i" `echo "$i"|sed ':a;N;s/\n//;ta'`; done
With perl, try something along these lines:
for i in *; do mv "$i" `echo "$i"|perl -pe 's/\n//g'`; done
This will rename all files in the current folder by removing all newline characters from them. If you need to go recursive, you can use find instead - be aware of the escaping in that case, though.

Answer 5

In fact there is a way to use sed:
carr='\n' # specify carriage return
files=( $(ls -f) ) # array of files in current dir
for i in ${files[#]}
do
if [[ -n $(echo "$i" | grep $carr) ]] # filenames with carriage return
then
mv "$i" "$(echo "$i" | sed 's/\\n//g')" # move!
fi
done
This actually works.