Thanks but the program already exists and it's in Perl: 
$ head -n 4 `which rename`
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#
#  This script was developed by Robin Barker (Robin.Barker@npl.co.uk),
#  from Larry Wall's original script eg/rename from the perl source.

[download]
I just need a new improved expression that catches all stupid file names and converts them to something sensible. The original post does it ok, I'd hoped someone had a thoroughly tested expression ready to post.

In reply to Re: Re: Clean filenames with /usr/bin/rename by bsb
in thread Clean filenames with /usr/bin/rename by bsb

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