I have a bunch of files in a dir and want ot move them from
mv *.JPG *.jpg

When I do this command on a unix system it works just fine.

When i do i on Linux I get this..
mv *.JPG *.jpg
mv: target `P1170003.jpg' is not a directory

Thats right its not a directory tis a jpg file.

I also tried the -T option and that did not work too

-T, --no-target-directory
treat DEST as a normal file

Do you want to move or rename files in same directory?

Based on the above sample of trying what you're doing, are you sure this is a good way to do what you're doing? I mean the wildcard bit?

I would not expect that to work on any system----In Bash, at least, the "*" expands to whatever Bash can see in the directory. The opportunity for ambiguity and confusion is huge.

try it this way:

Well all the files in that one directory are of the .JPG extension and I want to move them all to a .jpg. For some reason the sw i am using only see .jpg not .JPG files.

So I dont see why the wild card would be bad here. Now I would never use it with rm

I have used the * on AIX many times for just such a thing and its fine. Why would it be a problem?

I also tried using the first 3 characters and it did not work

mv P100*.JPG P100*.jpg

This works on AIX but not in Ubuntu for some reason.

What do you get with "ls | grep JPG"? If all the files are *.JPG", then what do you mean that the SW only sees "*jpg"?

Do "echo *"---you should get the same output as if you did "ls". Now imagine plugging all that in for the destination of the mv command.

I can't tell you why it at least **appears** to work on AIX, but I CAN tell you that it is not the way to do things in BASH.

If you had a directory with the files

file1.jpg file2.JPG file3.JPG file4.JPG

and you ran

mv *.JPG *.jpg

it would be the same as saying

mv file2.JPG file3.JPG file4.JPG file1.jpg

because the shell expands wildcards independently of the program to a list of filenames in the current directory.

Doesn't work on AIX either:I believe it _does_ work in DOS though. Maybe that's what you're thinking of.

Dave

There's also the rename command which I believe exists on most Linux distros, in this case one would do:

rename JPG jpg *.JPG

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When i refer to SW i was talking about photobucket www site wont let me upload fiels of a .JPG extension. Only a .jpg (various other ones work but no caps) My camera puts the file with a JPG extension so I have to move all the pictures to a .jpg extension before uploading


ahhhh thank you that was the command I must have been thinking of. My bad.. rename not mv. I have used mv to move various files/dirs out of the way so they dont get over written. But you are right one at a time not with *.

Sorry brain cramp.

Ok may be not.. I must be doing something fundamentally wrong here

rename test test2
Bareword "test" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at (eval 1) line 1.

What the heck is "strict subs"

So I just tried a bunch of junk files and it does not work either..
(dont mind th e.bff just a test extension) If i do the files one at a time with mv command it works.

touch test.bff test2.bff test3.bff
me@mysys:/tmp$ rename *.bff *.abc
Bareword "test2" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at (eval 1) line 1.
Bareword "bff" not allowed while "strict subs" in use at (eval 1) line 1.


I can do a cp of the file to a new name
I can do a mv one file at a time.

I googled this error and see lots of hits but no real solution. My name doe snot have a space in it like some solution suggested so No clue here.

I tried a .txt extension and a .JPG jpg on empty files and nothing worked.

I am my regular user and i own the files.

Try "rename --help" or "man rename" or read the previous post that had the answer.

rename JPG jpg *.JPG

Notice the list of files to change as the third argument.
The first argument is the original string. The second is the replacement string. The third ans subsequent arguments are the list of files to rename.

For example:
rename JPG jpg pic1.JPG pic2.JPG pic3.JPG
would rename just the three files you indicated.

Different distributions can have different programs called "rename". The one I have on mine is supplied as part of perl and uses the sed-and-perl-style "s///" syntax. So as suggested above, be sure to check the manpage.

And in fact, when I try to use the above style, I get the same error you do, so you're probably using perl rename also. This means that for you the command would be:

I highly suggest using the -n flag to dry-run the renaming first, as well as the -v option for verbose output.

Thank you. I would have thought rename/mv would be standard commands across releases.

yes I did do a man on the rename command before posting.

Well, mv is part of the gnu coreutils, so it's highly unlikely that any Linux distro will be using anything different. But outside of the basics there can sometimes be variations in which programs the distros offer. It's rare to have multiple programs with the same name though.

Other unixes (solaris, etc) also generally have their own versions of the core utilities. These are often less flexible than the gnu ones, since gnu has extended its versions with a great many options outside of the basic posix standards. This probably won't directly affect you very much, but you might want to keep it in mind when you search the web for scripting advice.

They are!!
But not between Linux and Unix. Was that the confusion?