Sed Command - - -How to change part of the name of multiple files

sahil.jammu · 04-02-2009, 05:45 AM

Hi Friends,

I have a doubt, as sed command is a stream editor, use to perform edits on stream of data. Given a file name to process sed will perform search and replace on all lines of file and sending modified data to standard output.

What if we want to replace multiple files together. For example i have a directory which contains 100 files and i want to replace many of them starting with particular string and i want extension to be same.

Example :-

dksdlsdklskdlsdklslssdsll.txt
ab123_12fhfhfkfkhd.jdslds.txt
ab123_12ssksksdksk.jdksdk.avi
ab123_12jskskjdjks.kdkddk.txt
sdjsdjksksddjksdjs.jsjdsk.txt
sdsdksdsdjsdksdkskskskssk.txt

I want to change ab123_12 with some string say hello , how can i do this with sed.

Kindly provide your inputs.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,
Sahil

acid_kewpie · 04-02-2009, 05:53 AM

You should never ask questions and try to demand a certain tool to be used etc. this is not what sed is for in the main. Here sed can be used to do a string substituion, but that's only a tiny part fo the overall problem.... the sed part would just be something like "sed s/abc_12/hello/". but you also need to iterate through a list, pass each item through sed to obtain the new name, and then run a rename from the original name to the new name. very little of that is sed.

Code:

for ORIG in *
do
  NEW=$(echo $ORIG | sed s/abc_12/hello/)
  [ $ORIG != $NEW ] && mv $ORIG $NEW
done

should work.

Vit77 · 04-02-2009, 06:00 AM

Why not to use just this:

Code:

rename ab123_12 hello *

without sed?

acid_kewpie · 04-02-2009, 06:29 AM

how did I not know that? seriously... how?

Certainly adds more weight to not demanding certain types of solution. Unless it's homework of course...

sahil.jammu · 04-02-2009, 06:34 AM

Thanks Chris for the reply.
If not by sed , what you suggest can be the way in to get the desired output.

Thnx!
Sahil

acid_kewpie · 04-02-2009, 06:56 AM

did you not read the rest of the replies?!?!

sahil.jammu · 04-02-2009, 10:57 PM

Hi Chris

I read your first reply and its working fine for me. Thanks.