🧹 Filename Sanitizer

A Bash script to rename files in a directory by removing unsafe characters, handling name collisions, and ensuring consistent lowercase filenames.

🧩 Features

Safe character handling: Removes all non-alphanumeric characters except underscores, hyphens, and periods
Unicode cleanup: Converts special characters like ’, ？, （, ） to standard ASCII
Collision avoidance: Adds numeric suffixes (_1, _2) to prevent overwriting
Case normalization: Converts filenames to lowercase
Space handling: Replaces spaces with underscores
Truncation: Limits base filenames to 250 chars to stay under 255 char limit
Dry-run support: Test changes before applying them

🚀 Usage

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/yourname/yourrepo.git
cd yourrepo

# Make the script executable
chmod +x rename_safe.sh

# Dry run (test mode)
./rename_safe.sh --dry-run /path/to/files

# Actual renaming
./rename_safe.sh /path/to/files

🧪 Test Script

# Run validation tests
./test_rename.sh

Creates files with:

Special characters (%, ’, !, (, ), ？)
Multi-dot extensions (.en.vtt)
Hidden files (.Hidden File)
Long filenames (near 255 char limit)
Duplicate filenames
Mixed case names

⚙️ Configuration

Edit rename_safe.sh to customize:

Max filename length: base_truncated="${sanitized_base:0:250}"
Allowed characters: sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9._-]//g'
Enable hidden file support: Uncomment .??* loop

⚠️ Known Issues

Files with no extension will have suffixes appended directly
Hidden file processing must be manually enabled
Full path length is not checked (only basename)

📦 Example

Before:

"Let’s Play A Game!.en.vtt"
"401(k) Plan.en.vtt"
"VeryLongFilename_AAAA...AAA.txt"
"Duplicate Name"

After:

"lets_play_a_game.en.vtt"
"401k_plan.en.vtt"
"verylongfilename_aaaaa...aaa.txt"
"duplicate_name"
"duplicate_name_1"

📝 License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details

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