csbio (biocs tumbled) - Ugly hack to fold path names into file names

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Ugly hack to fold path names into file names

I want to go from ../www.fda.gov/medwatch/SAFETY/2003/03AUG_PI/Advair Diskus_PI.pdf to 2003_-_03AUG_PI_-_Advair Diskus_PI.pdf

I came up with this hack:

find ../www.fda.gov/ -name '*_PI*pdf' > names_a 

find ../www.fda.gov/ -name '*_PI*pdf' | \
sed -e 's/.*safety\/\(.*\)/\1/gi' -e 's/\//_-_/g'> names_b

paste names_a names_b | ~/src/misc/to_tsv.py -0 \' | \
xargs -l1 ln

(The to_tsv.py script is used to wrap the filenames in quotes.) I guess a quick Python script would have been better…