renaming a bunch of files using for and mv

vituttaa · 02-03-2010, 05:02 PM

hello, this is a rather dumb question I suppose, but here goes anyway.

Basically I need to rename a bunch of .doc files using the for-structure and the mv command (w/ wildcards) in bash. I guess this would be a bit easier if I'd use the rename command, but since this is a school assignment of sorts I need to use for & mv.

The .doc files are named "1filename.doc", "2filename.doc" etc.
And I've got to rename them to "aaa_1filename.doc", "aaa_2filename.doc", "aaa_3filename.doc" and so on.

Tried to dabble quite a bit with the for and mv commands, basically just got a bunch of errors. Every damn time. For 2 hours. The most common error was "mv: missing destination file operand after ..."

So, what would be the right way to do this using for and mv? Thanks in advance, and I apologize if this is in the wrong section or just completely useless in other possible ways.

devnull10 · 02-03-2010, 05:09 PM

Code:

for i in $(ls *.doc)
do
  mv $i aaa_$i
done

evo2 · 02-03-2010, 05:14 PM

But you'll be in trouble any of the files has a space in its name. Better to use

Code:

for i in *.doc
do
   mv "$i" "aaa_$i"
done

Evo2.

devnull10 · 02-03-2010, 05:16 PM

I did think that when I posted it but I'd already edited twice to correct syntax errors so didn't again lol as the OP gave some example filenames.
Who puts spaces in filenames anyway?!?!? tut tut!!

evo2 · 02-03-2010, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by devnull10

Who puts spaces in filenames anyway?!?!? tut tut!!

Horrible people do. I just recently switched to using Chromium... and what do you know about the config files. "Don't be evil" hah!

Evo2.

devnull10 · 02-03-2010, 05:47 PM

lol. Just realised actually that my example wouldn't work with spaces because ls when used in a for loop tokenizes on spaces. When I renamed about 40K files to remove the space a while back I used something like:

Code:

find -depth ~/mydir/ | while read i
do
  mv "$i" $(echo "$i" | sed "s/ /_/g")
done

The advantage here is that the depth first search renames the files in a directory before the directory itself (ie, so you don't rename the directory and then the old location becomes invalid!

). Was surprisingly quick to run to be honest!

tredegar · 02-03-2010, 05:57 PM

Quote:

hello, this is a rather dumb question I suppose, but here goes anyway.

No question is "dumb", but yours is "homework" I think. There are LQ rules about this [See the panels at the right ... LQ Rules]

Quote:

Tried to dabble quite a bit with the for and mv commands, basically just got a bunch of errors

If you had posted your scripts (preferably within CODE tags ["Go advanced" from the quick reply button thingy]) we might be able to help you further.

"a bunch of errors" [ "No cheese in fridge. HALT"

] is not helpful, at all, to anyone.

Please help us help yourself.