Remove certain characters in a filename in Linux

Question

I have files in a directory such as

FILE1.docx.txt
FILE2.docx.txt
FILE3.docx.txt
FILE4.docx.txt
FILE5.docx.txt

And I would like to remove .docx from all of them to make the final output such as

FILE1.txt
FILE2.txt
FILE3.txt
FILE4.txt
FILE5.txt

How do I do this?

Jetchisel · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-06 05:15:21Z

3

With Parameter Expansion and mv

for f in *.docx.txt; do
  echo mv -vn "$f" "${f%%.*}.${f##*.}"
done

The one-liner

for f in *.docx.txt; do echo mv -vn "$f" "${f%%.*}.${f##*.}"; done

Remove the echo if you think the output is correct, to rename the files.

Should work in any POSIX compliant shell, without any script.

With bash, enable the nullglob shell option so the glob *.docx.txt will not expand as literal *.docx.txt if there are no files ending with .docx.txt

#!/usr/bin/env bash

shopt -s nullglob

for f in *.docx.txt; do
  echo mv -vn "$f" "${f%%.*}.${f##*.}"
done

UPDATE: Thanks to @Léa Gris add nullglob change the glob to *.docx.txt and add -n to mv, Although -n and -v is not defined by POSIX as per https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/mv.html It should be in both GNU and BSD mv

edited May 6, 2020 at 5:15

answered May 6, 2020 at 2:48

Jetchisel

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1 Comment

Léa Gris Over a year ago

Don't forget shopt -s nullglob in case no file match the *.txt globbing pattern. Also you can restrict the globbing pattern to candidates only with for f in *.docx.txt, Prefer mv -n to not overwrite existing files.

user13357341 · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-06 02:44:18Z

1

Just run this python script in the same folder that contains files:

import os

for file in os.listdir(os.getcwd()):
    aux = file.split('.')
    if len(aux) == 3:
        os.rename(file, aux[0] + '.' + aux[2])

answered May 6, 2020 at 2:44

user13357341

Comments

BlimBlam · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-06 05:55:09Z

0

you can make use of sed and bash like this:

for i in *.docx.txt
do
    mv "$i" "`echo $i | sed 's/.docx//'`"
done

answered May 6, 2020 at 5:55

BlimBlam

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