On our unix server we have a destination folder wich gets jpegs from the OPI server system.
These names are too long for reading on the Mac-clients. Limit is 31 characters.

How do I make a script wich watches the directory, recognizes the jpegs and limits the filenames to 31 characters while leaving the .jpg extension intact?

I usually use the c shell on both unix and Mac OS X

Regards,

JB

Here's something to start you off. I don't use csh, sorry!

maxLength=31
while :; do
for fileName in *jpg; do
((${#fileName} > maxLength)) && {
newFileName=$(echo $fileName | sed "s/.*\(.\{$maxLength\}\)/\1/") &&
! test -f $newFileName &&
mv $fileName $newFileName ||
echo Unable to rename $fileName
}
done
sleep 60
done

Thank you very much. It works very good.

For testing purposes I've commented out the line

while :; do

otherwise I have to restart before the process stops.

I have also difficulties understanding some commands

((${#fileName} > maxLength))

What is this doing?

And I don't fully understand the sed command

sed "s/.*\(.\{$maxLength\}\)/\1/"


.*\(.\{$maxLength\}\) is the pattern? and \1 the procedure?
What does \1 do?

What I want to change is that the name is truncated before .jpg and that a duplicate gets a number added 00, 01, 02 and so on.
I lowered the variable maxlength to 29 to create space for this number.

You 've already guessed it by now, I'm a beginner in scripting. But I'm working on it.

Regards,

JB

((${#fileName} > maxLength))

${#variable} is the character length of 'variable', so this command is testing if the length is greater than maxlength.

sed "s/.*\(.\{$maxLength\}\)/\1/"

The above command evaluates to...

sed 's/.*\(.\{31\}\)/\1'

What this is doing is matching 0 or more characters ('.' is a wildcard in sed), followed by 31 more characters. The .\{31\} pattern is contained in parentheses \(\) and so the matched pattern is held in a buffer by sed. As it is the first (and in this case, only) pattern in parentheses, the related buffer is buffer 1, referenced by \1. Simply put, it is replacing the whole string with the last 31 characters of that string.

What I want to change is that the name is truncated before .jpg and that a duplicate gets a number added 00, 01, 02 and so on.
I lowered the variable maxlength to 29 to create space for this number.

Hmmm... Something like this...

maxLength=31
typeset -Z2 fileCounter=0
while :; do
for fileName in *.jpg; do
((${#fileName} > maxLength)) && {
newFileName=$(echo $fileName | sed "s/.*\(.\{$maxLength\}\)/\1/") &&
while test -f $newFileName; do
newFileName=$fileCounter$(echo $fileName | sed "s/.*\(.\{$((maxLength - 2))\}\)/\1/")
fileCounter=$((fileCounter + 1))
done
mv $fileName $newFileName
}
fileCounter=0
done
sleep 60
done