removing a final space from a file/folder name using AppleScript

I've put a copy of the script in a Public Dropbox folder

<http://dl.dropbox.com/u/147841/remove_trailing_filename_spaces.sh>

You may still need to make it executable

chmod +x remove_trailing_filename_spaces.sh

Message was edited by: BobHarris

A great book for learnen' the Unix command line.

Practical Guide to Linux Commands, Editors, and Shell Programming, A (Paperback) Third edition includes Mac OS X the book

To see all extensions in the finder:

finder > prefernces

click on the advanced tab

check the box that says to show all extensions. Mostly good except that applications will show up with the .app extension.

Unix doesn't really have extensions. It's a convention picked up from other Operating Systems. So when you say filename, it will include the extension. There is a command for figuring out the type of data a file contains:

Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal

mac $ file MacScripter\ .pdf

MacScripter .pdf: PDF document, version 1.3

mac $

The Mac OS X finder does have extensions.

Robert

Hi Matt,

Thanks for letting me know. It would be possible to fix this in the Applescript, however It looks like you're happy with the bash script.

Best wishes

John M

If you download and install the Satimage osax so that you can run regular expressions in AppleScript, the following script should do what you need:

tell application "System Events"

set theFolder to folder "path:to:folder"

end tell

runItems(theFolder)

on runItems(theItem)

tell application "System Events"

if class of theItem is folder then

set folderContents to (every disk item of theItem whose visible is true)

repeat with thisItem in folderContents

my runItems(thisItem)

end repeat

end if

set oldName to name of theItem

set newName to change {"\\s+$", "\\s+(\\.[a-zA-Z0-9]+)$"} into {"", "\\1"} in oldName with regexp

if oldName ≠ newName then set name of theItem to newName

end tell

end runItems

Darn useful osax, that - I highly recommend it.

Hi Matt,

To run the script you have saved. Copy the path to it to a new Terminal window and press return.

Best wishes

John M

Hi,

The script appears to re-set the starting directory to "." in the following line of the script. Remove the line: EDIT_ME_STARTING_DIR="."

Best wishes

John M

I'm moving this to a new post below as the column width makes it unreadable.

Following on from above.

I'm not too hot on regex, so forgive me if I'm mistaken. There appears to be two cases where this script won't work correctly.

1. Where there is a directory with a trailing space with a file inside that also has a trailing space. The directory will be renamed and the file will not be where it is expected to be when the script comes to that result.
2. The script renames items with a trailing space ("/path/ending/in/space ") including files with space at the end ("/path/to/file.txt "), and also items with a space before the final dot as well as a space at the end (/path/to/file .txt "), but not to a file with the space before the dot with none after (/path/to/file .txt").

Best wishes

John M

Hi Matt,

MattLucas1505 wrote:

Aaaah, right. That appears to be the situation I'm in right now.

The script below fixes my second point, but not my first, which would involve stepping through the results of the find command in reverse (something I'm sure someone else will be able to provide the solution to).

#!/usr/bin/env bash

EDIT_ME_STARTING_DIR="/path/to/starting/directory"

find "$EDIT_ME_STARTING_DIR" -depth -name "* *" | perl -ne ' 
    chomp;  

    if ( /(.*\S)\s+(\.\S+)$/ ) { 
        rename $_, $1 . $2;      
        next;                   
    }

    if ( /(.*\S)\s+$/ ) {       
        rename $_, $1;          
        next;                   
    }
'

MattLucas1505 wrote:

Virtual beers, anyone?

If you're buying. 😉

Best wishes

John M

Another version that should read the result in reverse and therefore sort out items before their containers. This should fix my first point above.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

EDIT_ME_STARTING_DIR="/path/to/starting/directory"

find "$EDIT_ME_STARTING_DIR" -depth -name "* *" | tail -r | perl -ne '
    chomp;

    if ( /(.*\S)\s+(\.\S+)$/ ) {
        rename $_, $1 . $2;
        next;
    }

    if ( /(.*\S)\s+$/ ) {
        rename $_, $1;
        next;
    }
'

MattLucas1505 wrote:

.... this script falls down on finding examples such as:

"filename .ext"

Are you using "do shell script find"? If so, find has a -regex option (or better yet, case insensitive: -iregex), so:

find path/to/the/starting/directory -iregex '.* \..*'

should work, however, it will give a false positive to a filname with a '.' in its name, such as "Create a .zip archive.txt", so some tweaking of the regex is needed.

Tony