I am looking for a bash script that would help me rename a bunch of pics that I had on a Winblows machine. The files look like this

/granny/grannypics_(1001).jpg

I would like to rename them to something like this

/granny/grannypics.1001.jpg

I just recently switched from Winblows to ubuntu, not a noob but not a pro either, not scared to use the cli.

I have found a bash script that takes all the blank spaces out of file names I don't know if it can be modified to do what was explained above, but here it is if it helps

for i in `find . | tr "[:blank:]" "+" | grep "+"`; do echo "Changing Directory: " `echo $i | sed -r 's/\+/\\ /g'` " to " `echo $i | tr "+" "_"`; mv "`echo $i | sed -r 's/\+/\\ /g'`" `echo $i | tr "+" "_"`; done

If someone could explain to me how this script works or how to modify it to do the above I would be thankful. I could go in and edit each picture which would not be a big deal if there where one or two pics but I have over 10,000 to do so it would be a real pain one by one

Let me thank who ever responds to this thread in advance

That script looks too complicated. Try this:
Edit: Added the -i switch to mv. Note that I didn't test this, hopefully it won't do any harm.

I think this should work:

for i in *.jpg; do FN=$(echo "$i" | sed 's/_(/./g' | sed 's/)//g') ; mv "$i" "$FN" ; done

Try with some 10-20 files in another dir to see if it works .

Thanks going to go try it

Try typing this at command line and you'll see it display (not actually rename) the new name you want:
You have to encapsulate the file name in quotes because the parentheses have special meaning to the shell and most commands. The echo just says "display this". What is being displayed is "piped" (the veritical bar) into the first sed command.

The first sed is doing a (s)ubstitute. The format of substitute is forward slash, search pattern, forward slash, replacement pattern, forward slash. Our search pattern is _( but since ( is a special charater it has to be "escaped" with the backslash so the pattern becomes _\( instead. The replacment is the dot. We then have to pipe (vertical bar again) into another sed to substitute the ) with nothing. Again it has to be escaped so pattern becomes \). Since we aren't actually replacing that with anything we just put in the final forward slash (make sure there is no space between it and the other forward slash.

The rest of it is to encapsulate it in a for loop to make sure it does this for multiple files rather than just the grannypics_(1001).

This for loop sets OLDNAME as the variable name for each of the pictures presented by "ls *jpg" because we put backticks (not single quotes) around ls *jpg which means execute the command then use only its output (sort of a reverse pipe).

We then use the original command above but substitute the variable name for grannypics_(1001).jpg. We set this as a variable called NEWNAME. (Note the backtick usage again).

Finally we tell it to move the file from its old name to its new name.

The "for", "do" and "done" are required keywords of the loop. The "for" defines each item to do the loop on. The "do" specifies what to do to each item (this can be multiple lines long and can contain other loops and if/then conditionals). The "done" lets it know the "do" is complete.

Prior to actually running the above try doing:

This will simply show you what it gets for each variable rather than actually moving anything. Once you are sure it has the correct variable values you want then you can run the original for loop above.

Your original script is doing translations and other things but is essentially the same thing. It uses i ($i) as the variable name. The variable name is abitrary. You just have to remember whatever you name it that you call it by that name (e.g. "for billybob in" would require you to use $billybob within the do/done.) Also note the special usage of variable ${billybob}. This is the same as $billybob but insures that if you have anything AFTER the variable name that you want to append that it doesn't think it is PART of the variable name.

Here's another one: Here you could use the -n and -v switches to see if everything works properly.

OOOOHHHHH you guys/girls are good. Worked like a charm. I am just starting to understand the power of the command Line.

Thanks again for your assistance it was a great help.

Thanks for the write up JLightner, it explained alot of what is going on. Boy do I have a lot to learn about the command line.

charlie

Charlie,

FYI, maybe not applicable in this special example, but there is the "rename" command in Linux. (It might or might not be installed with your distro)

Syntax is like:
thus for example if you want to change all underscores to dashes in you jpg files:
The "s/oldpattern/newpattern/" is exactly the syntax as in the previous examples. (Guess what "rename" uses internally!)

In your case you would have had to run "rename" three times, but then you don't have to write a script.

The other methods work posted here work equally well I assume.

jlinkels

Here is another way:
for file in granny*; do
> mv -v "$file" "${file//[()]/}"
> done

Double quotes are used so that the () character don't start a subshell in bash. This example points out that you can use character classes in filename expansion.

Hi, friends!
I have a little "amendment":
In `sed' characters `(' and `)' doesn't have a special meaning, but escaped ones '\(', '\)' -- does. On the contrary, in `Perl' parentheses -- is a grouping char's, and escaped ones -- not.

Cheers!

Lets put it this way - without escaping the parentheses in the sed usage I listed it does NOT work. If you'd rather say they need to be escaped because of the shell rather than sed have at it.

Oh, sorry.
I use apostrophes and you -- not. My variant looks like this:

Let me say sorry one more time! I'm distrait a little.

No worries. The great thing about UNIX/Linux is there's a thousand ways to do anything.