Escaping brackets in file names

Question

I've got a few files named stuff like this: file (2).jpg. I'm writing a little Perl script to rename them, but I get errors due to the brackets not being replaced. So. Can someone tell me how to escape all the brackets (and spaces, if they cause a problem) in a string so I can pass it to a command. The script is below:

#Load all jpgs into an array.
@pix = `ls *.JPG`;

foreach $pix (@pix) {

    #Let you know it's working
    print "Processing photo ".$pix;

    $pix2 = $pix;
    $pix2 =~ \Q$pix\E;    # Problem line

    #Use the program exiv2 to rename the file with timestamp
    system("exiv2 -r %Y_%m%d_%H%M%S $pix2");
}

The error is this:

Can't call method "Q" without a package or object reference at script.sh line [problem line].

This is my first time with regex, so I'm looking for the answers that explain what to do as well as giving an answer. Thanks for any help.

Notice that you should use `String::ShellQuote` rather than `\Q...\E` to safely escape filenames, see http://stackoverflow.com/q/3796682/23118. — hlovdal, Dec 18 '14 at 14:23
Although in this case you could avoid the whole need to escape by using system in list mode, `system("exiv2", "-r", "%Y_%m%d_%H%M%S", "$pix");`. — hlovdal, Dec 18 '14 at 14:25

clt60 · Answer 1 · 2011-05-07T13:05:11.277

2

Why do not use a simple?

find . -name \*.JPG -exec exiv2 -r "%Y_%m%d_%H%M%S" "{}" \;

Ps: The \Q disabling pattern metacharacters until \E inside the regex.

For example, if you want match a path "../../../somefile.jpg", you can write:

$file =~ m:\Q../../../somefile.jpg\E:;

instead of

$file =~ m:\.\./\.\./\.\./somefile\.jpg:; #e.g. escaping all "dots" what are an metacharacter for regex.

edited May 07 '11 at 13:05

answered May 07 '11 at 12:44

clt60

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 07 '11 at 12:24

I found this perl renaming script that was written by Larry Wall a while back... it does what you need and so much more. I keep in in my $PATH, and use it daily...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use Getopt::Std;

getopts('ht', \%cliopts);
do_help() if( $cliopts{'h'} );

#
# rename script examples from lwall:
#       pRename.pl 's/\.orig$//' *.orig
#       pRename.pl 'y/A-Z/a-z/ unless /^Make/' *
#       pRename.pl '$_ .= ".bad"' *.f
#       pRename.pl 'print "$_: "; s/foo/bar/ if <stdin> =~ /^y/i' *

$op = shift;
for (@ARGV) {
   $was = $_;
   eval $op;
   die $@ if $@;
   unless( $was eq $_ ) {
      if( $cliopts{'t'} ) {
         print "mv $was $_\n";
      } else {
         rename($was,$_) || warn "Cannot rename $was to $_: $!\n";
      }
   }
}

sub do_help {
   my $help = qq{
   Usage examples for the rename script example from Larry Wall:
        pRename.pl 's/\.orig\$//' *.orig
        pRename.pl 'y/A-Z/a-z/ unless /^Make/' *
        pRename.pl '\$_ .= ".bad"' *.f
        pRename.pl 'print "\$_: "; s/foo/bar/ if <stdin> =~ /^y/i' *

   CLI Options:
   -h      This help page
   -t      Test only, do not move the files
      };
   die "$help\n";
   return 0;
}

Thanks for your help Mike, but I got it by myself - `quotemeta()` works wonders. This script looks good, but doesn't suit my needs. +1 for effort though :-) — Bojangles, May 07 '11 at 12:27
You could post your own answer and accept it if you like... that would also get you a measley 2 points :) — Mike Pennington, May 07 '11 at 12:33
Not even sneaky... in fact, it is [encouraged](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/89333/whats-the-best-way-to-post-a-tutorial-on-so/89339#89339) — Mike Pennington, May 07 '11 at 14:15

Escaping brackets in file names

2 Answers2