NAME

detox — clean up filenames

SYNOPSIS

detox [-f configfile] [-n | --dry-run] [-r] [-s sequence] [--special] [-v] file ...

detox [-L] [-f configfile] [-v]

detox [-h | --help]

detox [-V]

DESCRIPTION

The detox utility renames files to make them easier to work with under Unix and Unix-like operating systems. It replaces characters that make it hard to type out a filename with dashes and underscores. It also provides transliteration-based filters, converting ISO 8859-1 or UTF-8 to ASCII, in part or in whole. An additional filter unescapes CGI-escaped filenames.

Sequences

detox is driven by a configurable series of filters, called a sequence. Sequences are covered in more detail in detoxrc(5) and are discoverable with the -L option. The default sequence will run the safe and wipeup filters. Other examples of pre-configured sequences are iso8859_1 and utf_8, which both provide transliteration to ASCII and then finish with the safe and wipeup filters.

Options

-f configfile: Use configfile instead of the default configuration files for loading translation sequences. No other config file will be parsed.
-h, --help: Display helpful information.
--inline: Run in inline mode. See inline-detox(1) for more details.
-L: List the currently available sequences. When paired with -v this option shows what filters are used in each sequence and any properties applied to the filters.
-n, --dry-run: Doesn't actually change anything. This implies the -v option.
-r: Recurse into subdirectories. Any file or directory that starts with a period, such as .git/ or .cache/, will be ignored during recursion unless specified on the command line. Also, any file or directory specified in the ignore section of the config file will be ignored during recursion.
-s sequence: Use sequence instead of default.
--special: Works on special files (including links). Normally detox ignores these files. detox will not recurse into symlinks that point at directories.
-v: Be verbose about which files are being renamed.
-V: Show the current version of detox.

FILES

/etc/detoxrc: The system-wide detoxrc file.
~/.detoxrc: A user's personal detoxrc. Normally it extends the system-wide detoxrc, unless -f has been specified, in which case, it is ignored.
/usr/share/detox/cp1252.tbl: The provided CP-1252 transliteration table.
/usr/share/detox/iso8859_1.tbl: The provided ISO 8859-1 transliteration table.
/usr/share/detox/safe.tbl: The provided safe character translation table.
/usr/share/detox/unicode.tbl: The provided Unicode transliteration table, used by the UTF-8 filter.
/usr/share/detox/unidecode.tbl: An additional Unicode tranlsiteration table, based on Text::Unidecode(3pm).

EXAMPLES

detox -s lower -r -v -n /tmp/new_files: Will run the sequence lower recursively, listing any changes, without changing anything, on the files of /tmp/new_files.
detox -f my_detoxrc -L -v: Will list the sequences within my_detoxrc, showing their filters and options.

HISTORY

detox was originally designed to clean up files that I had received from friends which had been created using other operating systems. It's trivial to create a filename with spaces, parenthesis, brackets, and ampersands under some operating systems. These have special meaning within FreeBSD and Linux, and cause problems when you go to access them. I created detox to clean up these files.

Version 2.0 stepped back from transliteration out of the box, instead focusing on ease of use. The primary motivations for this were user-provided feedback, and the fact that many modern Unix-like OSs use UTF-8 as their primary character set. Transliterating from UTF-8 to ASCII in this scenario is lossy and pointless.

AUTHORS

detox was written by Doug Harple.

CAVEATS

If, after the translation of a filename is finished, a file already exists with that same name, detox will not rename the file.