Shell, delete space in the end of name

Question

I have some files or directory with space in the end of the name. It's possible with the shell to delete it ?

Thanks

Answer 1

Here is a native POSIX shell solution with no external calls.

#!/bin/sh

for file in *[[:space:]]; do            # loop over files/dirs ending in space(s)
  [ -e "$file" ] || continue            # skip empty results (no-op)
  new_file="${file%[[:space:]]}"        # save w/out first trailing space char
  while [ "$file" != "$new_file" ]; do  # while the last truncation does nothing
    file="${file%[[:space:]]}"          # truncate one more trailing space char
  done
  # rename, state the action (-v), prompt before overwriting files (-i)
  mv -vi -- "$file" "$new_file"
done

Answer 2

for f in *[[:space:]]; do                    # iterate over filenames ending in whitespace
  [[ -e $f || -L $f ]] || continue           # ignore nonexistent results (ie. empty glob)
  d=$f                                       # initialize destination variable
  while [[ $d = *[[:space:]] ]]; do          # as long as dest variable ends in whitespace
    d=${d:0:((${#d} - 1))}                   # ...trim the last character from it.
  done
  printf 'Renaming %q to %q\n' "$f" "$d" >&2 # log what we're going to do
  mv -- "$f" "$d"                            # and do it.
done

See:

• Parameter expansion, the syntax used to trim the last character (${varname:start:length} taking a slice of a given length starting at position start).
• Globbing, the mechanism used to list filenames ending in white space.
• The classic for loop, used to iterate over glob results.

The printf %q specifier is a bash extension which formats a string in such a way as to eval back to that original string's contents -- thus, it may print a name ending in a space as name\  or 'name ', but will in some way or another make sure that the whitespace is visible to the reader.