I can't make the mv command work on a Mac terminal - command-line

I am trying to move a file from Downloads to a folder on my desktop.
I keep getting this:
Why does the usage message appear afterwards?

It looks like your file has a space in it, so it needs to be escaped. Otherwise, mv tries to find a file named "Tres", one named "Beijos_C.pdf" and move them into that directory.
# Either...
mv Tres\ Beijos_C.pdf ~/Desktop/choro/
# ...or...
mv "Tres Beijos_C.pdf" ~/Desktop/choro/

If your file name contains spaces, you should surround it with " like this:
mv "my file name.txt" /home/user/Desktop

Related

Move file with a dash

I move file using Midnight Commander to file with name "-name.csv". But 'mc' thinks I use option. Why is this happening? And how I can move to file with name like "-name.csv".
desktop:~/s$ mv name.csv "-name.csv"
mv: invalid option -- 'a'
It's not mc, it's mv. Quoting doesn't help because the quotes are interpreted by the shell so mv receives unquoted parameters name.csv and -name.csv. You need to hide the dash so that option parser in mv stops thinking it's an option. Use relative path ./ for the current directory, or full path:
mv name.csv ./-name.csv
mv name.csv "`pwd`"/-name.csv

Using "rm" to remove files remotely from another directory?

I'm unable to use the rm command to remove files remotely from another directory. I'm a beginner so I apologise for my inability to elaborate properly.
Here's what I'm trying to do:
I'm trying to delete all .srt files from a sub directory. It works when I cd into the specific directory like so:
Command 1:
cd /users/jakubdonovan/library/cloudstorage/iCloud\ drive/the-modern-python3-bootcamp/target_folder
Command 2:
rm *.srt
However, let's say I want to quickly delete a specific file type from a folder without first using the "cd" command, like so:
rm *.srt /users/jakubdonovan/library/cloudstorage/iCloud\ drive/the-modern-python3-bootcamp/target_folder
It returns with "No matches for wildcard '*.srt'. See help expand."
Which is strange because I can use the touch, cp and and all the other commands remotely without a problem.
Is there a way to make the command "rm *.filetype" remove all the files with that specific filetype from a folder and all its subfolders in one swoop?
If you would like to rm in a sub-directory you just have to specify that sub-directory in the command.
rm /path/to/folder/*.filetype
or if you know that the folder is inside your current directory you can try...
rm ./folder/*.filetype

Remove msgid from .po file

I'm trying to remove a list of msgids from a .pot file. Is there some commandline tool which is capable of doing something like
msgdelete "foo*" bar.pot
I've found a workaround but it feels very dirty. Here I want to remove all msgids which consist of a single number or char:
msggrep -Ke '^[0-9a-z]$' project.pot > remove.po
msgcomm -u project.pot remove.po -o project.pot
rm remove.po

Delete files in a folder using Perl

I want to delete all files in a folder, which contain he word TRAR in their filename.. I hav etried the following :
CONFIG_DIR=`pwd`
VENDOR=ericsson-msc
RELEASE=v1
BASE_DIR=/appl/virtuo/gways
system ("cd /appl/virtuo/gways/config/ericsson-msc/v1/spool/input_d; rm-rf *TRAR");
remove all your config lines ( are they even perl? )
CONFIG_DIR=`pwd`
VENDOR=ericsson-msc
RELEASE=v1
BASE_DIR=/appl/virtuo/gways
and
system ("cd /appl/virtuo/gways/config/ericsson-msc/v1/spool/input_d; rm -rf *TRAR")
should work but you should really be using perl code (unlink, etc)
I suspect you are confusing the usage of perl with how you will use awk in bash scripts.
As #Steffen Ullrich said, that isn't Perl or Shell. But I'll try to make it a little more Perlish for you:
First, note that
variables in Perl start with a $
strings need "quotes around them"
statements end with a ;
spaces around = are ok and make it all easier to read
so
$CONFIG_DIR = `pwd`;
$VENDOR = "ericsson-msc";
$RELEASE = "v1";
$BASE_DIR = "/appl/virtuo/gways";
Next, see how you can combine these into a single string like this (I'm guessing that's what you want to do)
$DIR_FOR_CLEANING = "$BASE_DIR/config/$VENDOR/$RELEASE/spool/input_d";
Lastly, you should be really careful whenever using the -r command to rm along with a wildcard like *. Look up the man page for rm and see if -r is something you want to do. I don't think you need it here, unless you have directories named *TRAR that you want to recurse into to remove. I'll bet you only have files named *TRAR in that input_d directory.
Also, the command the way you wrote it could fail the cd if that directory doesn't exist, and would then proceed to recursively remove *TRAR from whatever directory you're running the script from. But you don't need to change directories at all. Try something like this
system ("echo rm -f $DIR_FOR_CLEANING/*TRAR");
If the echo command lists the files you do in fact want it to remove, then remove the "echo" and the rm will start deleting stuff.

Change file extensions of multiple files in a directory with terminal/bash?

I'm developing a simple launchdaemon that copies files from one directory to another. I've gotten the files to transfer over fine.
I just want the files in the directory to be .mp3's instead of .dat's
Some of the files look like this:
6546785.8786.dat
3678685.9834.dat
4658679.4375.dat
I want them to look like this:
6546785.8786.mp3
3678685.9834.mp3
4658679.4375.mp3
This is what I have at the end of the bash script to rename the file extensions.
cd $mp3_dir
mv *.dat *.mp3
exit 0
Problem is the file comes out as *.mp3 instead of 6546785.8786.mp3
and when another 6546785.8786.dat file is imported to $mp3_dir, the *.mp3 is overwritten with the new .mp3
I need to rename just the .dat file extensions to .mp3 and keep the filename.
Ideas? Suggestions?
Try:
for file in *.dat; do mv "$file" "${file%dat}mp3"; done
Or, if your shell has it:
rename .dat .mp3 *.dat
Now, why your command didn't work: first of all, it is more than certain that you only had one file in your directory when it was renamed to *.mp3, otherwise mv would have failed with *.mp3: not a directory.
And mv does NOT do any magic with file globs, it is the shell which expands globs. Which means, if you had this file in the directory:
t.dat
and you typed:
mv *.dat *.mp3
the shell would have expanded *.dat to t.dat. However, as nothing would match *.mp3, the shell would have left it as is, meaning the fully expanded command is:
mv t.dat *.mp3
Which will create a file named, literally, *.mp3.
If, on the other hand, you had several files named *.dat, as in:
t1.dat t2.dat
the command would have expanded to:
mv t1.dat t2.dat *.mp3
But this will fail: if there are more than two arguments to mv, it expects the last argument (ie, *.mp3) to be a directory.
For anyone on a mac, this is quite easy if you have BREW, if you don't have brew then my advice is get it. then when installed just simply do this
$ brew install rename
then once rename is installed just type (in the directory where the files are)
$ rename -s dat mp3 *