Sometimes I'm asked to make cd's of files with hugely descriptive long long filenames , but I can't write filenames over 64 chars to cd.
This script compacts such filenames by firstly removing whitespace, then a wordlist, and if still too long it deletes the end of the name (not including the extension).
It works recursively from the directory specified at command line.
rl.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use File::Find;

find(\&crusher, $ARGV[0]);

sub crusher{
    $nlength = length($_);
    if ($nlength > 64){
        ($fname, $extension) = split(/\./,$_, 2);
        $fname =~ s/\W//g;                                        
        $fname =~ s/(the|this|that|at|on|in|of|to|by|with)//ig;    
        if (length($fname) + length($extension) > 63){        
            $fkeep=  (63 - length($extension));
            $fname = substr($fname, 0, $fkeep);                
        }
    $newname = join ".", ($fname,$extension);
    rename($_, $newname) or warn "couldn't rename : $! \n";
    }
}

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In reply to compact filenames to < 64 characters by RuyLopez

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