Re: [TCLUG:18790] quick way to strip spaces...

[Luke Francl <fran0382@tc.umn.edu>]

On Thu, 15 Jun 2000, Troy Johnson wrote:

> #!/usr/bin/perl -w
> 
> opendir D, ".";
> for (readdir D)
> {
> 	$oldname = $_;
> 	s/[ \[\]{}<>(),~]/_/g;
> 	s/\.MP3/.mp3/g;
> 	rename $oldname, $_;
> 	chmod 0655, $_;
> }

Now, the best thing about this script is that you can make it an
executable file, then put it in your cron file (the system-wide one is
/etc/crontab, usually) to have it run nightly (or weekly) as you
mentioned. You get your MP3s the way you want them -- with zero effort!

As an aside, I really admire Perl's power and maturity as a language. But
I can't stand the syntax! I mean, $_, yeah that's intuitive. And as much
as people recommend "Programming Perl", I just don't like that book. Some
people love the asides and puns, but I think they're annoying and distract
from the point. The function reference section is good, but I think
simple, basic Perl programming went out the window for it -- the first
chapter is pathetic.

Perl could definately use an annotated online manual like PHP's [1].

Then again, just IMHO.

Luke

[1] Anybody else notice the PHP guys deleted all the anotations!? That was
the best part...fools.