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I am trying to replicate the Perl command from this answer on Ask Ubuntu in a Windows command line environment. I believe I have downloaded Perl for Windows and installed it correctly, so the error seems to be one of syntax.

The original command in a Linux shell is:

ls | perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/' . filename.csv

I believe the Windows version should be:

dir > perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/' >> filename.csv

However, this is the error I'm getting:

Invalid switch - "(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg".

'/'' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.

What is the correct syntax for running this Perl command in Windows?

Windows uses | as the pipe character too. Copy the command directly, but replace ls with dir and filename with expenses.csv

Added as answer because I don't have the reputation to comment

The other answer is not correct. If you do that you'll still get errors when running in cmd

C:Users>dir | perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/'

Can't find string terminator "'" anywhere before EOF at -e line 1.

'/'' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.

The reason is due to multiple issues in the command

• Single quote ' is not a quoting symbol in cmd.exe


• 
  Comma ,, semicolon ; and equals = are also delimiters beside space and and tab like other shells

Even / sometimes separates command arguments like dir/b/c/d or yourcommand/param but luckily it doesn't apply in this case. So 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/' will be passed as multiple parameters if there are any word separator in it, which is , in this case, and the command will be equivalent to

perl  -pe  's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2   $3-$4-$5   $6   $   & /'

and your proposed command dir > perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/' >> filename.csv will be parsed as

>>filename.csv >perl dir -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2  $3-$4-$5  $6  $ & /'

since >file redirection can appear at any places. That causes the Invalid switch - "(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg" you saw above, because that's not a valid switch to dir

That's also the reason why there's an error from perl Can't find string terminator "'" anywhere before EOF at -e line 1 apart from the lines from cmd because in the first parameter begins with ' but there's no closing '. It's easy to check how it's split into parameters:

E:>type testparam.bat

@echo off

:loop

if "%1"=="" goto :exit

echo "%1"

shift

goto :loop

:exit



E:>testparam -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/'

"-pe"

"'s/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2"

"$3-$4-$5"

"$6"

"$"

'/'' is not recognized as an internal or external command,

operable program or batch file.

Now look at the output and notice the funny things happen: because of the ampersand, &/' will end the previous command and execute a command named /' which doesn't exist and outputs an error like above

The best solution is to use PowerShell, where you can run the command with just a slight change because single quote is also used for quoting in PowerShell

ls |% { $_.Name } | perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/'

ls along with dir and gci in PowerShell alias to Get-ChildItem. And you need |% (which is an alias of ForEach-Object) to print the object names. An alternative in PowerShell is

cmd /c dir | perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/'

I've left out the redirection for clarity. The output will be printed to stdout. If you want to redirect it to file just append >filename.csv or >>filename.csv depending on whether you want to overwrite or append

Running the command in cmd would be far more troublesome (and new code should use PowerShell anyway, as it has bene the default options for a long time)

dir | perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2^,$3-$4-$5^,$6^,$^&^/'

In this case changing ' to " also works, but it'll quickly break in many other situations

dir | perl -pe "s/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/"

Note that even in Linux your command is also wrong

ls | perl -pe 's/(.)(.*)_(d{4})(d{2})(d{2})_(d+).jpg/u$1$2,$3-$4-$5,$6,$&/' . filename.csv

You need >filename.csv instead of . filename.csv