Question

I’m using leanpub.com and imported my blog, but accidentally left it to import images. I don’t want that so now I want to strip the images from about 2,000 individual markup files. If you’re familiar with markdown you’ll know an image is designated like such

![optional alt text](url/link "optional title")

update: upon further inspection a few images are also links so they are contained like this:

[![alt text](image link "title text")](url image links to)

sample text:

[![Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own (A&E DVD Archives)](images/51EEVBAA32L._SL160_.jpg)Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own (A&E DVD Archives)](http://www.amazon.com/Hollywood-Empire-Their-Own-Archives/dp/B0009HMTEO?SubscriptionId=08NDXT4K5C4JPKBB4702&tag=amz&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0009HMTEO)This 
"lucid, inviting work of social history" (The New York Times) highlights the 
bold and enduring vision of the Jewish immigrants who founded Hollywood and reinvented American culture.

Answer 1

Just strip out everything between the tokens ![ and ). Note that the optional trailing space is important, since links can be surrounded by other text.

sed --in-place='.bak' 's/!\[.*)[[:space:]]\?//' [file ...]