Batch rename question

hellblade · 05-02-2004, 06:44 PM

Hi.

Is there any way to batch rename some files.
To be more specific my files have the following name format:

1111.aaaa.bbbb.2222.3333.jpg

1111, 2222, 3333 -> remane the same to all files
aaaa, bbbb -> differs from file to file

I want them to become:

1111 - aaaa - bbbb.jpg

I hope it's clear what I want to do.

Thanks in advance.

rkef · 05-02-2004, 07:05 PM

Do you actually want spaces in the filenames? I'm not good in dealing with spaces, so if you don't want 'em this will work:

Code:

for i in *.jpg; do mv $i `echo $i | awk -F'.' '{print $1"-"$2"-"$3".jpg"}'`; done

Backup your files before trying it, in case I'm wrong

haha (didn't thoroughly test it, but it seems right).

hellblade · 05-03-2004, 05:52 AM

Thanks for your reply.
I don't understand this command so I can't tweak it for the spaces. If I try:

Code:

for i in *.jpg; do mv $i `echo $i | awk -F'.' '{print $1" - "$2" - "$3".jpg"}'`; done

it sais that the last argument has to be a directory so if somebody could help I would appretiate it.

And something else. In my example bbbb is in_this_format. Can I make it in_that_way?

rkef · 05-03-2004, 12:23 PM

(edit: it just needed quotes around the second argument to mv

. I'm slow!)

Spaces in filename are generally highly annoying, but if it's what you really want this will work:

Code:

for i in *.jpg; do mv $i "`echo $i | awk -F'.' '{print $1" - "$2" - "$3".jpg"}'`"; done

The reason the command works, step by step:

Code:

1) 'for i in *.jpg; do' - this construct loops over ever file ending
    in .jpg, in the current dir
2) 'mv $i' - mv each file, in turn, to the result of the evaluation of 3)
3) "`echo $i | awk -F'.' '{print $1" - "$2" - "$3".jpg"}'`" - from left to right:
        i)  echo the filename
        ii) pipe the filename into awk, which splits it into strings, based
            on the field separator (-F'.' sets the field separator to the
            period).  String names are $1, $2, $3, ..., $6 in this case
        iii) the last part of the awk expression prints fields 1, 2, 3
            with hyphens/spaces in between, follow by .jpg;
             this print statement is the final value returned as the
             second argument of the mv command in 2)

Hope that was useful.

dARkHunTEr · 05-03-2004, 03:57 PM

You might want to try krename if you're using X.