How to Rename a Bunch of Files to Eliminate Quote Marks

How to rename a bunch of files to eliminate quote marks

simple single line bash code:

for f in *; do mv -i "$f" "${f//[\"[:space:]]}"; done

$f is your current file name and ${f//[\"[:space:]]} is your bash substring replacer which stands for:
in this f (file name), // (replace) these [\"[:space:]] (characters) with nothing[1].

NOTE 1: string replacement statement: ${string//substring/replacement}; because you don't need to replace your substring to nothing, leave /replacement to blank.

NOTE 2: [\"[:space:]] is expr regular expression.

how to delete a file with quote in file name

If you only need to do this once in a while interactively, use

rm -i -- *

and answer y or n as appropriate. This can be used to get rid of many files having funny characters in their name.

It has the advantage of not needing to type/escape funny characters, blanks, etc, since the shell globbing with * does that for you. It is also as short as it gets, so easy to memorize.

How to get rid of enclosing double-quotes in the expanded `forfiles` variables?

One approach is to nest a for %I loop within the forfiles and use the %~I expansion -- use this code in a Command Prompt window:

forfiles /P "C:\root" /M "*.txt" /C "cmd /Q /C for %I in (@relpath) do echo %~I"

To use that code within a batch file you must double the %-signs:

forfiles /P "C:\root" /M "*.txt" /C "cmd /Q /C for %%I in (@relpath) do echo %%~I"

The returned list of files will be (relying on the sample files from the original question):

.\file1.txt
.\file2.txt

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Another variant is to nest another forfiles in the body of the initial one, because forfiles removes (non-escaped) double-quotes within given strings like the command line after /C:

forfiles /P "C:\root" /M "*.txt" /C "cmd /C forfiles /P @path\.. /M @file /C \"cmd /C echo @relpath\""

Or alternatively (the doubled inner forfiles is intentional, this works around a bug -- see this post):

forfiles /P "C:\root" /M "*.txt" /C "forfiles forfiles /P @path\.. /M @file /C \"cmd /C echo @relpath\""

The inner forfiles will enumerate exactly one item, which is the one passed over by the outer loop. Since @relpath is already expanded when the inner loop is executed, the quotes are removed as they are not escaped.

So the returned list of files looks like (again taking the sample files from the original question):

.\file1.txt

.\file2.txt

The additional line-break between the lines is generated by forfiles. You can avoid that using redirection (dismiss forfiles output, but display only the echo output in the console window):

> nul forfiles /P "C:\root" /M "*.txt" /C "cmd /C forfiles /P @path\.. /M @file /C 0x22cmd /C > con echo @relpath0x22"

How to use sed to remove all double quotes within a file

You just need to escape the quote in your first example:

$ sed 's/\"//g' file.txt

writing double quotes to file name text with powershell

In Windows you cannot use certain chars in a file or folder name;
a double quote is one of those.

Read more at https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/desktop/fileio/naming-a-file.

Excerpt from that page:

The following reserved characters [are not allowed]:

< (less than)
(greater than)

: (colon)
" (double quote)
/ (forward slash)
\ (backslash)
| (vertical bar or pipe)
? (question mark)
* (asterisk)

Removing double quotes from variables in batch file creates problems with CMD environment

You have an extra double quote at the end, which is adding it back to the end of the string (after removing both quotes from the string).

Input:

set widget="a very useful item"
set widget
set widget=%widget:"=%
set widget

Output:

widget="a very useful item"
widget=a very useful item

Note: To replace Double Quotes " with Single Quotes ' do the following:

set widget=%widget:"='%

Note: To replace the word "World" (not case sensitive) with BobB do the following:

set widget="Hello World!"
set widget=%widget:world=BobB%
set widget

Output:

widget="Hello BobB!"

As far as your initial question goes (save the following code to a batch file .cmd or .bat and run):

@ECHO OFF
ECHO %0
SET BathFileAndPath=%~0
ECHO %BathFileAndPath%
ECHO "%BathFileAndPath%"
ECHO %~0
ECHO %0
PAUSE

Output:

"C:\Users\Test\Documents\Batch Files\Remove Quotes.cmd"
C:\Users\Test\Documents\Batch Files\Remove Quotes.cmd
"C:\Users\Test\Documents\Batch Files\Remove Quotes.cmd"
C:\Users\Test\Documents\Batch Files\Remove Quotes.cmd
"C:\Users\Test\Documents\Batch Files\Remove Quotes.cmd"
Press any key to continue . . .

%0 is the Script Name and Path.

%1 is the first command line argument, and so on.

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