macOS Multiple File Renaming (special Characters)

[JasonWoodall]

So I'm having a problem batch renaming files with special characters in their names.
in Bash (terminal command prompt)
I can use this command to change files with a " at the beginning and end of the filename.
for i in *; do mv $i ${i/\"/};done;for i in *;do mv $i ${i/%\"/};done

My problem is that the characters I want to remove are the open and close quotes: option+[ and shift+option+[

I tried typing those characters into the line above instead of the escaped " but no luck.

Any ideas?

 

[iMeowbot]

What character set are you using in Terminal? For OS X file names, you'll want Unicode input (Terminal->Window Settings form the menu, then pick Display in the Terminal inspector window, change Character set Encoding to Unicode (UTF-8) ).

The left quote should be \342\200\234 and the right \342\200\235 ... if you are seeing \322 and \323 or question marks when you type those, you've got the wrong charset.

 

[JasonWoodall]

My Terminal settins are Unicode (UTF-8)

Yeah I am seeing:
\342\200\234 and the right \342\200\235 when I type it out, but when I list the directory after running the bash script, I get results that don't work quite right.

I can ls \342\200\234* and it shows me all the files with ??? as the first char.
if I then run:
for i in *; do mv $i ${i/\342\200\234/};done
and then ls \342\200\234*
...

I just tried it and it worked... ??? Brains going a little crazy
Thanks for your help.

 

[iMeowbot]

I just tried it and it worked... ??? Brains going a little crazy

Don't you just hate when that happens? Apple could spend a little time making ls output a little more useful. . .