been playing with sorting files. file names are in format :

texttext_0001.bmp
texttext_0002.bmp
texttext_0003.bmp
texttext_0004.bmp
etc. into the thousands

have gotten as far as being able to isolate the numerical part of the filenames from the
extension and text preceeding the underscore. problem comes when i try to perform
math on the remaining numerical part i get errors because bash looks at this as octal
information. i knew how to use basic once upon a time to grab just the right part of the
string but can't figure this out for bash. how do i get bash to look at numbers with
leading 0's not as octal so i can work with them? either that or how do i strip out the
leading 0's?

for what it's worth, i'm making a loop that divides the numbers by 5 and sending the
files which are evenly divisible this way to another directory.

tia, and the script follows,
BabaG

#!/bin/bash

cd /home/babag/Buddies/Part-1

for i in *.bmp ; do
j=`echo "$i" | awk -F"." '{print$1}'`
k=`echo "$j" | awk -F"_" '{print$2}'`

if [ $((k % 5)) == 0 ]; then
mv $i /home/babag/Buddies/holding/$i
fi

done

This is another way to do what you are trying, but does not directly address your question.

Since you are taking the files with numbers exactly divisible by 5, I believe you could do this:

mv *0.bmp *5.bmp /home/babag/Buddies/holding/

try:

thanks for the help everyone. wound up using the printf version from osvaldo.
the 10# solution from CroMagnon shows the 10# characters when echoed to
the screen. both work and i've got both in the script so i can study. thanks
again. and ogmoid, i apreciate the tip but as i'm learning i wanted to use the
others as i thought i'd learn more from them in the long run. thanks again to
all.

BabaG

Yes, the 10# will echo to the screen if you print the variable, it only affects bash's treatment of the number for calculations. Since the only place you use $k is in the mod 5 calculation, I didn't think that would be an issue. Anyway, it's useful to know how to force bash to use a specific base - you can use up to base 64 if necessary.

thanks cromagnon. all good info for this noob.