renaming files

TomalakBORG · 12-23-2005, 03:21 PM

Hey guys, I downloaded a bunch of stuff with d4x, and it saved them all beginning with a dot.

example:
.foo.txt

Last time I tried renaming them, (about 50 of them) I did something like # mv .* * and ended up deleting all my files. I was seriously mad at myself for a week. What is the way to take some .file.extension and move them to file.extension with a single command?

Brian1 · 12-23-2005, 08:07 PM

Cannot think of a command persay. A simple script can do this but I am terrible at scripting. If nothing happens in a couple of days you might post a similiar topic under the programming section. I use Krename from KDE to do things like you want. http://freshmeat.net/projects/krename/

Brian1

btmiller · 12-23-2005, 09:33 PM

See "man rename" (no quotes). The rename commandwill do what you want, e.g.

Code:

rename . '' .[a-zA-Z0-9]*

You might want to make a backup copy of the files first, just in case!

linmix · 12-24-2005, 04:11 AM

I'd been trying to come up with something using rename, but I got stuck using ? as a wildcard. Nice sollution!

TomalakBORG · 12-24-2005, 10:14 AM

Oh good call! What I discovered in the meantime was a slick way to do it in windows with a little program.. good program, bad os. Thanx for the rename command - just what I needed!