Add text to the beginning of file names

xebix · 10-01-2008, 03:46 PM

I tried doing a search on the forums to do what I want, but didn't have much luck.

I have a directory of files, and I want to prepend the same text string to each file.

example:
file1
file2
file3

renamed to:
this.file1
this.file2
this.file3

Thanks in advance for any help.

CRC123 · 10-01-2008, 04:00 PM

Code:

for looper in `ls <directory>`
do
    mv $looper "this.$looper"
done

xebix · 10-01-2008, 05:28 PM

Thanks. That was exactly what I needed.

jgallo · 10-01-2008, 11:50 PM

i was already on here and needed the answer to this right now, and there it was!
thanks!

i92guboj · 10-02-2008, 01:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CRC123

Code:

for looper in `ls <directory>`
do
    mv $looper "this.$looper"
done

Not to be picky, but this has a little problem: quote the variables, unless you are certain that they will contain no special characters (like spaces, for example).

Code:

for looper in `ls <directory>`
do
    mv "$looper" "this.$looper"
done

Otherwise you are going to have problems if any files name has spaces.

Besides that, if you are using bash there's no need to use ls (and it can save you some pain sometimes to avoid it):

Code:

for looper in "/directory/"*
do
    mv "$looper" "this.$looper"
done

ghostdog74 · 10-02-2008, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xebix

I tried doing a search on the forums to do what I want, but didn't have much luck.

I have a directory of files, and I want to prepend the same text string to each file.

example:
file1
file2
file3

renamed to:
this.file1
this.file2
this.file3

Thanks in advance for any help.

if you have Python, you can use the script in my sig called File Renamer.
eg usage

Code:

# ls -1
file1
file2
file3

# filerenamer.py -i "this." -l "file*"
==>>>>  [ /home/file1 ]==>[ /home/this.file1 ]
==>>>>  [ /home/file3 ]==>[ /home/this.file3 ]
==>>>>  [ /home/file2 ]==>[ /home/this.file2 ]

 filerenamer.py -i "this."  "file*" #remove -l to commit
/home/file1  is renamed to  /home/this.file1
/home/file3  is renamed to  /home/this.file3
/home/file2  is renamed to  /home/this.file2

# ls -1
this.file1
this.file2
this.file3