Ik I can use grep to find filenames with specific characters and then print that to a list but idk how to utilize said list to rename. I found another solution which’s using mv but couldn’t figure out how to make it work w subdirectories. I think using both grep and mv in unison’s the answer just idk how to do it. plz halp

  • sinextitan@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 day ago

    basically I’m mirroring my music library to my new phn and Android shits itself when it encounters ?,*," in filenames. I used to manually remove them but today I decided to actually learn how to automate.

      • sinextitan@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 day ago

        I didn’t get my music from yt-dlp. and even if the source title contains special chars, yt-dlp uses chars that look the same but aren’t.

        edit: am aware of the feature but the one I mentioned does the job for me

        • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          yt-dlp has an option to rename downloaded files to restrict to ASCII characters (and another option to restrict filename length). I usually use my own wrapper script around yt-dlp, but I guess you already have your own. So for that, you can use the option --restrict-filenames to “Restrict filenames to only ASCII characters, and avoid “&” and spaces in filenames”. See all options with man yt-dlp. Try it out.

          • sinextitan@lemmy.worldOP
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            1 day ago

            Ik of yt-dlp being able to rename the media that I download using it. but I didn’t use it to get my music. plus it’s not a prob that I have w yt-dlp. even w/o yt-dlp using their same same but not same chars, Linux doesn’t mind ?,* and " in filenames. but I do like the feature as / does present probs.

    • eleijeep@piefed.social
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      1 day ago

      Are you just trying to remove special characters from the filename, or are you also trying to move them to new directories?

      • sinextitan@lemmy.worldOP
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        1 day ago

        trying to remove them so that I can transfer to Android. I can use grep to improve my manual process but I’d love for it to be automatic.

    • Björn@swg-empire.de
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      1 day ago

      Nice, extra hard because those symbols all have special meanings when searching something. Nice puzzle, I wish I had the energy to solve it right now.