Renaming Files according to Pattern

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Batch renaming files

Let us assume that I have six files named:

1.a, 1.b, 1.c
2.a, 2.b, 2.c

where a,b,c are file extensions like sh, txt etc.

Now, I want to rename the files 1.a, 1.b, 1.c with say 5.a, 5.b, 5.c and 2.a, 2.b, 2.c with 6.a, 6.b and 6.c. Here both 2 and 6 are user supplied inputs.

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 15 '13 at 07:24

3

Not tried, but should work

$ rename 's/1/5/' 1.*
$ rename 's/2/6/' 2.*

rename man page

answered Jan 15 '13 at 07:24

mtk

27,530
35
94
130

Guru · Answer 2 · 2013-01-15T06:30:56.297

1

One way:

#!/bin/bash

for num in 1 2
do
    read -p "Enter new val for files starting with $num :" val
    for i in ${num}*.[abc]
    do
            ext=${i##*.}
            mv $i "$val.$ext"
    done
done

edited Jan 15 '13 at 06:30

answered Jan 15 '13 at 06:25

Guru

5,905

You can use read -p to combine the read and the prompt in the same command. – jordanm Jan 15 '13 at 06:27
@jordanm : thanks for your input, updated the solution – Guru Jan 15 '13 at 06:31

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 15 '13 at 06:26

Here is a bash function that will do the trick:

do_rename() {
   oldnum=$1 # assign parameters for clarity
   newnum=$2

   for f in "$oldnum".*; do # get all files matching the old number
       mv "$f" "$newnum"."${foo##*.}" # use a parameter expansion to get the exetension of the current filename
   done
}

Renaming Files according to Pattern

3 Answers3