BASH USAGE: mass files rename

sirpelidor · 09-17-2005, 07:36 PM

howdy, i'm trying to use bash commands to rename many files at once because renaming one file by one is very time cosuming and easy to make errors. Sure using "tab" save alot of typing, but i think there's gotta way to make my job a little easier.

here's the example of some of the rename i wanna accomplish:
[apple@localhost test]$ ls
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\01.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\02.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\03.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\04.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\05.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\06.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\07.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\08.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\09.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\10.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\11.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\12.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\13.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\14.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\15.jpg

i wanna rename all of 'em from 01.jpg all the way 15.jpg
so it'll become something like:
[apple@localhost test]$ ls
01.jpg 02.jpg 03.jpg 04.jpg 05.jpg 06.jpg 07.jpg 08.jpg 09.jpg
10.jpg 11.jpg 12.jpg 13.jpg 14.jpg 15.jpg

so i don't have to type this 15 times....
any suggestions?
TIA

Matir · 09-17-2005, 08:24 PM

They all seem to already have that name. Buf if you want to move them to the current directory, you could do 'mv kuku2comic/hunterXhunter/hunter212/212/* .'

macemoneta · 09-17-2005, 08:29 PM

This will do it (among the dozens of possible methods):

Code:

ls -1 kuku2comic\\hunterXhunter\\hunter212\\212\\* | awk -F\\ '{print "mv \"" $0 "\"",$5}' | bash

wpyh · 09-17-2005, 08:31 PM

No, they are all in the current directory (notice the backslashes instead of slashes). What I would do if I were sirpelidor is:

$ rename <tab> '' *

the <tab> will give me kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\, then rename will replace it with ''.

I don't think this is BASH USAGE, since rename is not a bash command.

edit: But <tab> usage is readline usage, which is used by bash. And macemoneta is faster than me

jschiwal · 09-17-2005, 08:33 PM

Suppose that you wanted to add the prefix 'hunter212_' to all of the jpg files. This is how I would do it:
for file in *.jpg; do mv "$file" "hunter_$file"; done

The double quotes are only needed if the file names contain a whitespace character, and prevent a name from being split into two arguments by the shell.

sirpelidor · 09-19-2005, 01:42 AM

Thanks for all the replies:
Matir: they are in the same directory, xx\xxx is a window way to put a white space within filename, and i need to rename them so i can write my own program to access those files.

macemoneta: when tried your method:
[apple@localhost test]$ ls -l kuku2comic\\hunterXhunter\\hunter212\\212\\* | awk -F\\ '{print "mv \"" $0 "\"",$5}' | bash
i got this:
mv: invalid option -- r
did i type something wrong?

wpyh: your idea is awsome, it really did saved me a lot of time, thank you

jschiwal: the programming method you've showed is very clean, what language is that, is it perl? what if i just wanna take off the whole "kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\" and only keep something like: hunter212_1.jpg? thank you very much

thanks for all the help

bash is awsome

Earthwings · 09-19-2005, 05:30 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by sirpelidor
jschiwal: the programming method you've showed is very clean, what language is that, is it perl? what if i just wanna take off the whole "kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\" and only keep something like: hunter212_1.jpg? thank you very much

That was bash as well. Use ${variable#strip-this-string-from-front} for simple renaming:

Code:

for file in *.jpg; do mv -i $file ${file#kuku2comichunterXhunterhunter212212}; done

Using the "-i" parameter for mv makes sure you don't overwrite something accidently.

If all you want is renaming the files with increasing numbers, then this is a nice way as well:

Code:

for file in *.jpg; do mv -i $file $((++i)).jpg; done

$((++i)) increases the variable $i in each turn.

@jschiwal: Quoting is not needed as bash escapes filenames automatically if you use bash filename patterns. This is not true of course if you would replace the *.jpg by something like 'ls -1 *.jpg'

macemoneta · 09-19-2005, 10:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by sirpelidor
macemoneta: when tried your method:
[apple@localhost test]$ ls -l kuku2comic\\hunterXhunter\\hunter212\\212\\* | awk -F\\ '{print "mv \"" $0 "\"",$5}' | bash
i got this:
mv: invalid option -- r
did i type something wrong?

Yes; the option after the first command (ls) is -1 (one) not -l (lowercase L). The -1 option insures that only a single file is listed per line. If you break the stages down (with a few sample files I created):

$ ls -1 kuku2comic\\hunterXhunter\\hunter212\\212\\*

kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\01.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\02.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\03.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\10.jpg
kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\11.jpg

The first stage, above, lists the files that will be manipulated.

$ ls -1 kuku2comic\\hunterXhunter\\hunter212\\212\\* | awk -F\\ '{print "mv \"" $0 "\"",$5}'

mv "kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\01.jpg" 01.jpg
mv "kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\02.jpg" 02.jpg
mv "kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\03.jpg" 03.jpg
mv "kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\10.jpg" 10.jpg
mv "kuku2comic\hunterXhunter\hunter212\212\11.jpg" 11.jpg

Adding the second stage, above, lists the files to be manipulated to awk, which converts them into the commands that will perform the renames. These are just displayed to standard out.

By adding the pipe to bash, the commands will get executed:

$ ls -1 kuku2comic\\hunterXhunter\\hunter212\\212\\* | awk -F\\ '{print "mv \"" $0 "\"",$5}' | bash

$ ls

01.jpg 02.jpg 03.jpg 10.jpg 11.jpg

jschiwal · 09-20-2005, 12:36 AM

Quoting is needed if the filename might contain whitespace.

One thing to consider is producing a bashref.dvi or bashref.ps document for printing.
These versions of the bash reference are much better looking that reading through the
info pages. You could produce it from the bashref.texi file by installing the bash source package.

If you have an rpm based system, then install the source rpm like:

Code:

rpm -Uhv bash-3.0.15.src.rpm

Your particular version may very.
Next cd to the SPEC dirctory and apply the patches.

Code:

# cd /usr/src/packages/SPECS   # this is the location for SuSE linux
su
<password>
rpmbuild -bp     # this applies the patches which may include the documentation

Now cd to the BUILD directory and enter the directory for the patched source:

Code:

cd ../BUILD
tar xvjf bash-3.0.tar.bz2
cd bash-3.0
./configure        # this produced the "Makefile"
make dvi            # this produces the .dvi document, bashref.dvi.  ~150 pages.
make ps             # this produces the bashref.ps documents as well as others.

Now there will be print worthy documents in the ./doc/ directory.