Re: [TCLUG:18790] quick way to strip spaces...

[<andy@theasis.com>]

> Would it be better at this point to actually make a perl script to do it
> all, instead of just continuously typing in that long line of code again and
> again(say once every week or so...)

A Perl script is just a matter of saving your long line of code to a file,
preferably in a more readable form. 

 perl -e 'opendir D, "."; for(readdir D) {$x=$_; s/[(,)]/_/g; rename $x, $_;}'

I.e., something more like:

	#!/usr/bin/perl
	#
	opendir D, ".";
	for(readdir D){
	    $x=$_;
	    s/[(,)]/_/g;
	    rename $x, $_;
	}

Then if you name it myscript.pl, you can call it as 
	perl myscript.pl

From there you will probably make it more convenient for reuse. 

Others have recommended books; my suggestion is O'Reilly's "Learning Perl"
and "Mastering Regular Expressions". If you want a head start, look at the
current issue of Maximum Linux magazine, which has a surprisingly nice
perl intro article.


Andy