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Detect & remove leading space in file or folder name – CentOS

I need to detect and remove lot of leading spaces on my folders & files.

i try some code like :

find /home/account -depth -name " *" -exec sh -c 'f="{}"; mv -v "$f" "...."' ;

but i couldn’t find any code to remove leading space from filename or folder.

i need to :

mv "/home/account/folder/ folder 1"  "/home/account/folder/folder 1"

(because i use find, and make it detect leading spaces on sub folders)

how do i remove those leading space with code that i mentioned above ?
any advice would help.
btw, i’m using centos 7.

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4

Answers


  1. 0

    Try this:

    find /home/account -depth -name "* " | sed "s// ///g"
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  2. 0

    -name "* " matches filenames having trailing spaces in their names. I fixed that below, and used -execdir to make it easier to remove leading space using parameter expansions.

    find /home/account -depth -name ' *' -execdir sh -c '
for f; do
    mv -v "$f" "${f#./[[:space:]]}"
done' _ {} +

    For a dry-run precede mv with echo.

    If there might be multiple leading spaces then the convenient way is to use an extglob (which is a bash extension) in the parameter expansion:

    find /home/account -depth -name ' *' -execdir bash -c '
shopt -s extglob
for f; do
    mv -v "$f" "${f#./+([[:space:]])}"
done' _ {} +
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  3. 0

    You can use bash substitution to extract the file name, and eliminate leading spaces.

    Minor note: the pattern -name "* " looks for file with a trailing space(s). If you are looking for a filter for leading space(s) use -name " *", or for any space than -name "* * ". Sample code uses leading space pattern. You can adjust pattern and sed as needed.

    find /home/account -depth -name " *" | while read fn ; do
   d=${fn%/*}
   b=$(echo "${fn##*/}" | sed -e 's/^ *//')
   mv "$fn" "$d/$b"
done
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  4. 0

    use rename

    • -name “* “ : matches filenames having trailing spaces in their names
    • rename ‘s/ //gi’ : replace space with nothing

    –>

    find /home/account -depth -name "* " | rename 's/ //gi'
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