How to remove escaped characters in filenames?

Question

I would like to remove escaped characters from filenames, so these examples

=Web_Help_Desk_Pro%26Lite.pdf
=Windows_7_%2b_s-drev.pdf

would become

=Web_Help_Desk_ProLite.pdf
=Windows_7__s-drev.pdf

Does anyone know how to do this in either Perl or BASH?

Answer 1

If $file is your filename:

my $file = '=Web_Help_Desk_Pro%26Lite.pdf';
$file =~ s/%[0-9a-f]{2}//gi;

i.e. replace % followed by two hex characters with the empty string.

Answer 2

To just remove the percent sign and the following two hex digits:

$path =~ s/%[\da-f][\da-f]//gi;