Scripted folder name changes and recursive

disruptive · 02-28-2008, 04:10 PM

I would like to add a prefix to all directories and all directories within those directories. How can I do this. I also would like to change a few of the files within these folders. Now I can do the last bit with sed, however I need a consistent way of going recursively through the directories and changing the name of each and every directory by adding a prefix. In other words.

Folder1
- Folder2
- Folder3
Folder4
- Folder5

to

PrefixFolder1
- PrefixFolder2
- PrefixFolder3
PrefixFolder4
- PrefixFolder5

Thanks

jasohl · 02-28-2008, 04:30 PM

you could use the rename command. you could write a script to automate and run the command differently for each directory. i took some programming in the past but i'm not proficiant at scripting so can't give you any specifics. theres a bash scripting HOWTO on tldp.org if your interested. someone else may be able to provide you with some examples or simple scripts.

angrybanana · 02-28-2008, 04:58 PM

Here's a python script to do it.
back up data first, it worked on your sample example, but I didn't test it much beyond that.

Code:

import os

for root, dirs, files in os.walk('.', topdown=False):
    for dir in dirs:
        full_path = os.path.join(root, dir)
        new_full_path = os.path.join(root, 'Prefix' + dir)
        os.rename(full_path, new_full_path)

before:

Code:

$ ls *
a.py

folder1:
folder2  folder3

folder4:
folder5

after:

Code:

$ python a.py
$ ls *
a.py

Prefixfolder1:
Prefixfolder2  Prefixfolder3

Prefixfolder4:
Prefixfolder5

EDIT: Didn't know there was an 'execdir', use osor example (next post)

osor · 02-28-2008, 04:58 PM

One way to do it is (from the parent directory—in your example, the directory that is the parent of Folder1 and Folder 4):

Code:

find -mindepth 1 -depth -type d -execdir rename 's|/|/Prefix|' '{}' ';'

Alternatively,

Code:

find * -depth -type d -execdir rename 's|/|/Prefix|' '{}' ';'

osor · 02-28-2008, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angrybanana

EDIT: Didn't know there was an 'execdir', use osor example (next post)

Well, there isn’t always an execdir (but I think it’s on at least GNU and BSD find), so I guess it’s not the most portable thing to use (although it is sometimes convenient).

Btw, you don’t have to use execdir, you can use plain exec as well:

Code:

find * -depth -type d -exec rename 's|(?=[^/]*$)|Prefix|' '{}' ';'

angrybanana · 02-28-2008, 05:47 PM

Quick question on rename. My rename doesn't seem to have options for regex. After looking it up, it seems my rename comes from "util-linux-ng". I've heard of a perl rename (I assume this is what you're using), just wondering where I could find it.

osor · 02-28-2008, 06:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by angrybanana

I've heard of a perl rename (I assume this is what you're using), just wondering where I could find it.

I thought it came in the perl tarball (with the other utilities such as a2p, pod2text, etc.), but I guess you have to get it from CPAN.

Btw, you don’t need to invoke perl at all. E.g, in GNU find:

Code:

find * -depth -type d -printf 'mv "%p" "%h/Prefix%f"\n' | while read line; do eval $line; done

Or in BSD find

Code:

find * -depth -type d | while read line; do
	mv "$line" "$(dirname $line)/Prefix$(basename $line)"
done

ghostdog74 · 02-28-2008, 08:08 PM

Code:

ls -R /full/path   | awk 'BEGIN{OFS=FS="/";prefix="myprefix";q="\047"}
/^\/.*:$/{
  gsub(/:$/,"")
  org=$0
  $NF=prefix"-"$NF
  cmd = "mv "q  org q" " q $0 q
  print cmd
  #system(cmd)
}'