Question

I am trying to create a script that walks a directory and renames files. I would like to be able to extract the filename and file extension separately, but if the file path contains either spaces or Swedish UTF8-characters such as ÅÄÖ, it breakes.

I’ve found the below shown snippet to extract the filename + extension here on SO, but as I am seeing that it works on paths with no UTF-chars or whitespace, I am thinking that I am not properly escaping my variables.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong. Any ideas on what I can do to make this work with paths with UTF8 chars and whitespace?

for file in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS; do

  FULLPATH="$file"
  FILENAME=${FULLPATH##*/}
  FILEEXTENSION=${FILENAME##*.}
  BASEDIRECTORY=${FULLPATH%$FILENAME}

  #Log the vars for debugging
  echo "$FULLPATH" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt
  echo "$FILENAME" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt
  echo "$FILEEXTENSION" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt
  echo "$BASEDIRECTORY" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt

done

Answer 1

The problem is that the NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATH variable is new-line escaped per item.

You need to use:

while read file; do

  FULLPATH="$file"
  FILENAME=${FULLPATH##*/}
  FILEEXTENSION=${FILENAME##*.}
  BASEDIRECTORY=${FULLPATH%$FILENAME}

  #Log the vars for debugging
  echo "$FULLPATH" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt
  echo "$FILENAME" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt
  echo "$FILEEXTENSION" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt
  echo "$BASEDIRECTORY" >> ~/Desktop/log.txt

done <<<"$NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_FILE_PATHS"