how to change extensions for many files in other directory path

FahadOnline · 05-26-2008, 02:21 PM

Hi, I've got to learn how to change the extensions for many files in the working directory using the following command

Code:

for x in *.ext1; do mv "$x" "${x%.ext1}.ext2"; done

but I want to know how to do the same job with specifying a path to another directory that contains the files I want to modify, in other words, I don't want to navigate to each directory using "cd" to run that command.

Hope someone here have an answer, I've been googling a lot about this but couldn't find it.

Thanks you in advance.

bigrigdriver · 05-26-2008, 04:42 PM

Perhaps something like this:

Code:

for x in /path/to/files/*.ext1; do mv "$x" "${x%.ext1}.ext2"; done

FahadOnline · 05-26-2008, 11:36 PM

that worked like charm, but not with the first "/", I did it like this:

Code:

for x in path/to/files/*.ext1; do mv "$x" "${x%.ext1}.ext2"; done

Thank you very much for your help

chrism01 · 05-27-2008, 12:22 AM

bigrigdriver's example uses an absolute path ie tells the cmd where to start in terms of the entire disk partition ie starting from the root dir.
Yours is a relative path ie it'll only work if that path exists in your current dir.
HTH

alMubarmij · 07-16-2008, 02:40 PM

Oh My God .. you just need like the following command to do this simple operator:

Code:

mv *.txt *.doc

And you can do it in the same way in M$ Windowz:

Code:

move *.txt *.doc

Or:

Code:

ren *.txt *.doc

kenoshi · 07-16-2008, 04:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mubarak's

Oh My God .. you just need like the following command to do this simple operator:

Code:

mv *.txt *.doc

mv *.txt *.doc will expand to:

mv a.txt b.txt *.doc

*.doc will be interpreted as a directory and fail.

Another ways to do this (my personal favorite):

ls /path/to/dir/*.ext1 | sed -e "s/^$.*$.ext1/\1.ext1 \1.ext2/g" | xargs -n 2 mv -f

But alas, someone decided that was too much to bear, so in comes:

rename .ext1 .ext2 /path/to/dir/*.ext1

Hehe, hope this helps.

alMubarmij · 07-17-2008, 02:40 AM

Thank you,
You can also use rename instead of mv by the same method.

Quote:

Originally Posted by kenoshi

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mubarak's ...

My name here is "alMubarmij" .. Why you changed it to "Mubarak" ?!