Remove Newline from end of Filename

Question

I'm trying to clean up some files on a Linux NAS. They were transferred over from old storage years ago now files and folders include the newline character "\n" at the beginning and end of the file\folder name.

If I look at them "ls -lab" I get something that looks like this:

\n Folder_Name \n

A similar post helped me remove the "\n" from the beginning of the filename but the one at the end is lingering.

(rename $'\n' '' *)

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 27 '19 at 01:35

3

Your system's rename appears to be the util-linux variant¹ - in which case you can just run the same command a second time to remove the second newline ex.:

$ ls -Q
"\nfile name\n"
$ rename.ul $'\n' '' *
$ ls -Q
"file name\n"
$ rename.ul $'\n' '' *
$ ls -Q
"file name"

¹ see What's with all the renames: prename, rename, file-rename?

answered Jul 27 '19 at 01:35

steeldriver

81,074

SMH
I want to promise myself that I did this, but apparently I didn't Thank you!
– Ian Young Jul 27 '19 at 01:42
@IanYoung n/p - glad to help – steeldriver Jul 27 '19 at 01:46

Thanks! thought you might want to see the finished product.

cd -- "$(find . -name $'*[\n]*' -type d -printf '%h' -quit | grep -v “/.backups”)” ; rename $'\n' '' * ; rename $'\n' '' *

– Ian Young Jul 29 '19 at 23:28

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 27 '19 at 00:45

1

You can just mv the file like usual, you just need to put the file name in quotes and hit the return key. So:

$ ls -b
  file\n
$ mv "file
> " file
$ ls -b
  file

That should do the trick for you, it's worked for me in the past. It would have also worked for the original case, you'd have just need a return before the filename as well.

Welcome to Unix StackExchange!

answered Jul 27 '19 at 00:45

Ungeheuer

333

I tried that, but the mv command doesn't recognize the file path
mv: cannot stat ‘\FILENAME\n’: No such file or directory [1]+ Exit 1 mv -i "\FILENAME\n" Breaking
– Ian Young Jul 27 '19 at 01:32
I can manually do one directory at a time when there's only ONE directory
```
    mv * NEW_DIRECTORY_NAME 
```
but if I try any form of entering the directory name as it's listed (\nDIRECTORY_NAME\n) it can't be found
– Ian Young Jul 27 '19 at 01:33
What's the exact command you typed out? – Ungeheuer Jul 27 '19 at 01:36
ls -b
DIRECTORY\n

mv "DIRECTORY\n" DIRECTORY

mv: cannot stat '\DIRECTORY\n' No such file or directory
– Ian Young Jul 27 '19 at 02:07
1

@IanYoung Once you open the double-quote, type the filename then hit the return/enter key. It won't recognize the linefeed escape sequence. – Ungeheuer Jul 27 '19 at 02:17

Remove Newline from end of Filename

2 Answers2

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