rename shell utility

Hi,

I'm trying to create a rename shell utility.

I would use it to copy certain folders to a given new folder and rename certain files in that folder.

The folders and the names of the musicians, the files are the mp3 or ogg-Files. To tryout different compilations, I must rename the Folders (some of my mp3-Players only read 10 characters of the folders) to a shorter name and also some of the too long file names of the mp3-ogg - Files must be renamed to a shorter name.

To make different compilations possible I want to have the information stored in some kind of project file. Then one could copy different folders to a temporary place and rename folders and files only when necessary.

For example (There are three lines between the "---", the third one starting with "2--06" is too long for usenet and so is split into several lines ...) ---.project-file--- Too Long Folder Name:-somewhereelse-Shorter *.mp3 2--06--Ballo tedesco e francese - Tre parti di gagliarde Giovanni Antonio.mp3:2--06--Ballo tedesco e francese - Tre parti di gagliarde.mp3 ---end-------------

That may create a Folder "-somewhereelse-Shorter" and may copy all *.mp3 from "Too Long Folder Name" to "-somewhereelse-Shorter" and rename all following entries from the long name to the short name. For this example it would rename "2--06--Ballo tedesco e francese - Tre parti di gagliarde Giovanni Antonio.mp3" to "2--06--Ballo tedesco e francese - Tre parti di gagliarde.mp3"

But I have yet no clue how to parse the .project-file for the information before the ":" and after the ":".

I would prefer a straight bash script, but awk is also OK. Perl is not really appreciated, cause I don't "speak" it very well.

Any ideas?

(BTW, hope my English is not too bad so you get what I mean... :-))

Greetings

Dietrich