Re: [Ranger-users] Bulk-anything command

[John Z.]

> >>> Hi,
> >>>     is there a way to execute a command on selected files, much like
> >>>     bulkrename does?
> >>>     Right now, the only solution that comes to me is faking it, somehow,
> >>>     with sh and xargs.
> >>>
> >>>     Cheers.
> >> Hi, 
> >>
> >> I typically do:
> >>
> >>   :shell for f in %s; do <mycommand> "$f"; done
> >>
> >> you could easily bind this to a key with:
> >>
> >>   :map X console -p22 shell for f in %%s; do  "$f"; done
> >>
> >> then, to run a command, you can type e.g. Xecho<ENTER>
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >> hut
> >
> > Thanks for the tip, I ended doing something similar:
> >
> >     :shell echo %s | tr " " "\n" | xargs -L 1 <command>.
> >
> > I figure your way is less roundabout tho, but you know that thing when
> > you're stubborn and just really want to make it work :-D
> >
> >
> May I suggest a change to make it more secure and robust?
> 
>      :shell printf '%%s\0' %s | xargs -0 -L 1  <command>
> 
> It'll handle the spaces in filenames correctly. Technically it'll handle
> even newlines in the filenames but you're unlikely to encounter such files.
> 
> Cheers
> -- 
> vifon
> 

Awesome, thanks mate, I didn't even notice -0 option in xargs man :-)

Additionally, I'm glad to have an opportunity to ask a question
regarding %%s: I assume first % escapes the second one? How does this
work, then?

The reason I ask is because just yesterday, I wanted to yank current
directory, and I noticed that when I press 'y', a little menu offers 'd'
which seems to put %d into X selection, using xsel.

However, when I pasted the contents, I got out literal '%s', instead of
directory, so I asssumed %%s was a typo, but now I see it being used.

Can you explain to me, please, what's the thing with it?

--
John