[ale] Stupid Shell Trick

[Mike Fletcher]

>>>>> "Todd" == Todd Graham Lewis <tlewis at mindspring.net> writes:

    Todd> On Wed, 10 Feb 1999, Wandered Inn wrote:
    >> for f in $(find . -name '*\;*' -print); do mv -i "$f"
    >> "${f%;*}"; done

    Todd> This consumes an amount of memory proportional to the size
    Todd> of the directory tree.  To do it in constant space, do the
    Todd> following:

    Todd> # find . -name '*\;*' -print | while read f
    while> do mv -i "$f" "${f%;*}" done

	TMTOWTDI. :)

	Put the following into a script (maybe called `unversionize')
and chmod it executable:


#/usr/bin/perl
use File::Find;
die "usage: $0 dir [dir . . .]" unless scalar @ARGV;
find( sub { /^([^;]+);\d+$/ && rename $_ => $1 }, @ARGV );


	Or if you just need to use it once or twice, the command line
version would be:


perl -MFile::Find -e 'find(sub{/^([^;]+);\d+$/&&rename $_=>$1}, at ARGV)' dir


	Keep in mind that you can use any perl code to decide what to
do as you walk the directory tree (e.g. you could only unversion files
ending in `.c' or `.h' that have been modified within the last week
that are over 2k in length and the owner is . . . ).  For more info,
`perldoc File::Find' or `man File::Find' depending on your MANPATH
settings.

-- 
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