How can I rename a file on unix using characters in filename? - unix

I have a bunch of files in a unix directory that look like the following:
filename_1234567.txt
I need to rename them by copying the last three characters of each filename
to the front of the filename like this:
567_filename_1234567.txt
Note: Both the filename and extension are variable.
I'm running this on a Solaris box.
Thanks in advance!

One possibility:
\ls *.txt | sed 's/\(.*\)\(...\).txt/mv \1\2.txt \2_\1.txt/' | sh
(probably wise to write that with echo mv, while you're double-checking it does what you think it does).
I can't decide if the alternative
sed 's/\(\(.*\)\(...\).txt\)/mv \1 \3_\2.txt/'
is more robust, or just way too fussy.

#for file in *_*.*
for file in `ls *_*.txt`
do
last_3="$(echo $file | grep -o "...\...."|cut -d'.' -f1)"
cp $file ${last_3}_${file}
done

Related

Rename filename to filename_inode (Unix)

I would like to move my file from one location to another.
In the process, I want my filename to change from filename to filename_inode
Any idea how I can do that?
I know I can get the inode using
ls -i $filename
I would prefer a solution that does not require me to download any addition features.
In Bash, you can do the following
FILE=*<your-file-name>*
mv $FILE ${FILE}_$(ls -li $FILE | awk '{ print $1}')

In-place processing with grep

I've got a script that calls grep to process a text file. Currently I am doing something like this.
$ grep 'SomeRegEx' myfile.txt > myfile.txt.temp
$ mv myfile.txt.temp myfile.txt
I'm wondering if there is any way to do in-place processing, as in store the results to the same original file without having to create a temporary file and then replace the original with the temp file when processing is done.
Of course I welcome comments as to why this should or should not be done, but I'm mainly interested in whether it can be done. In this example I'm using grep, but I'm interested about Unix tools in general. Thanks!
sponge (in moreutils package in Debian/Ubuntu) reads input till EOF and writes it into file, so you can grep file and write it back to itself.
Like this:
grep 'pattern' file | sponge file
Perl has the -i switch, so does sed and Ruby
sed -i.bak -n '/SomeRegex/p' file
ruby -i.bak -ne 'print if /SomeRegex/' file
But note that all it ever does is creating "temp" files at the back end which you think you don't see, that's all.
Other ways, besides grep
awk
awk '/someRegex/' file > t && mv t file
bash
while read -r line;do case "$line" in *someregex*) echo "$line";;esac;done <file > t && mv t file
No, in general it can't be done in Unix like this. You can only create/truncate (with >) or append to a file (with >>). Once truncated, the old contents would be lost.
In general, this can't be done. But Perl has the -i switch:
perl -i -ne 'print if /SomeRegEx/' myfile.txt
Writing -i.bak will cause the original to be saved in myfile.txt.bak.
(Of course internally, Perl just does basically what you're already doing -- there's no special magic involved.)
To edit file in-place using vim-way, try:
$ ex -s +'%!grep foo' -cxa myfile.txt
Alternatively use sed or gawk.
Most installations of sed can do in-place editing, check the man page, you probably want the -i flag.
Store in a variable and then assign it to the original file:
A=$(cat aux.log | grep 'Something') && echo "${A}" > aux.log
Take a look at my slides "Field Guide To the Perl Command-Line Options" at http://petdance.com/perl/command-line-options.pdf for more ideas on what you can do in place with Perl.
cat myfile.txt | grep 'sometext' > myfile.txt
This will find sometext in myfile.txt and save it back to myfile.txt, this will accomplish what you want. Not sure about regex, but it does work for text.

What's the best way to convert Windows/DOS files to Unix in batch?

Basically we need to change the end of line characters for a group of files.
Is there a way to accomplish this with a batch file? Is there a freeware utility?
dos2unix
It could be done with somewhat shorter command.
find ./ -type f | xargs -I {} dos2unix {}
You should be able to use tr in combination with xargs to do this.
On the Unix side at least, this should be the simplest way. However, I tried doing it that way once on a Windows box over a decade ago, but discovered that the Windows version of tr was translating my terminators right back to Windows format for me. :-( However, I think in the interveneing decade the tools have gotten smarter.
Combine find with dos2unix/fromdos to convert a directory of files (excluding binary files).
Just add this to your .bashrc:
DOS2UNIX=$(which fromdos || which dos2unix) \
|| echo "*** Please install fromdos or dos2unix"
function finddos2unix {
# Usage: finddos2unix Directory
find $1 -type f -exec file {} \; | grep " text" | cut -d ':' -f1 | xargs $DOS2UNIX
}
First, DOS2UNIX finds whether you have the utility installed, and picks one to use
Find makes a list of all files, then file appends the ": ASCII text" after each text file.
Finally, grep picks the text files, Cut removes all text after ':', and xargs makes this one big command line for DOS2UNIX.

batch rename to change only single character

How to rename all the files in one directory to new name using the command mv. Directory have 1000s of files and requirement is to change the last character of each file name to some specific char. Example: files are
abc.txt
asdf.txt
zxc.txt
...
ab_.txt
asd.txt
it should change to
ab_.txt
asd_.txt
zx_.txt
...
ab_.txt
as_.txt
You have to watch out for name collisions but this should work okay:
for i in *.txt ; do
j=$(echo "$i" | sed 's/..txt$/_.txt/')
echo mv \"$i\" \"$j\"
#mv "$i" "$j"
done
after you uncomment the mv (I left it commented so you could see what it does safely). The quotes are for handling files with spaces (evil, vile things in my opinion :-).
If all files end in ".txt", you can use mmv (Multiple Move) for that:
mmv "*[a-z].txt" "#1_.txt"
Plus: mmv will tell you when this generates a collision (in your example: abc.txt becomes ab_.txt which already exists) before any file is renamed.
Note that you must quote the file names, else the shell will expand the list before mmv sees it (but mmv will usually catch this mistake, too).
If your files all have a .txt suffix, I suggest the following script:
for i in *.txt
do
r=`basename $i .txt | sed 's/.$//'`
mv $i ${r}_.txt
done
Is it a definite requirement that you use the mv command?
The perl rename utility was written for this sort of thing. It's standard for debian-based linux distributions, but according to this page it can be added really easily to any other.
If it's already there (or if you install it) you can do:
rename -v 's/.\.txt$/_\.txt/' *.txt
The page included above has some basic info on regex and things if it's needed.
Find should be more efficient than for file in *.txt, which expands all of your 1000 files into a long list of command line parameters. Example (updated to use bash replacement approach):
find . \( -type d ! -name . -prune \) -o \( -name "*.txt" \) | while read file
do
mv $file ${file%%?.txt}_.txt
done
I'm not sure if this will work with thousands of files, but in bash:
for i in *.txt; do
j=`echo $i |sed 's/.\.txt/_.txt/'`
mv $i $j
done
You can use bash's ${parameter%%word} operator thusly:
for FILE in *.txt; do
mv $FILE ${FILE%%?.txt}_.txt
done

How to do a mass rename?

I need to rename files names like this
transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=XXXXX
to just this
XXXXX.txt
How can I do it?
I understand that i need more than one mv command because they are at least 25000 files.
Easiest solution is to use "mmv"
You can write:
mmv "long_name*.txt" "short_#1.txt"
Where the "#1" is replaced by whatever is matched by the first wildcard.
Similarly #2 is replaced by the second, etc.
So you do something like
mmv "index*_type*.txt" "t#2_i#1.txt"
To rename index1_type9.txt to t9_i1.txt
mmv is not standard in many Linux distributions but is easily found on the net.
If you are using zsh you can also do this:
autoload zmv
zmv 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=(*)' '$1.txt'
You write a fairly simple shell script in which the trickiest part is munging the name.
The outline of the script is easy (bash syntax here):
for i in 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='*
do
mv $i <modified name>
done
Modifying the name has many options. I think the easiest is probably an awk one-liner like
`echo $i | awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`
so...
for i in 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='*
do
mv $i `echo $i | awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`.txt
done
update
Okay, as pointed out below, this won't necessarily work for a large enough list of files; the * will overrun the command line length limit. So, then you use:
$ find . -name 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=*' -prune -print |
while read
do
mv $reply `echo $reply | awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`.txt
done
Try the rename command
Or you could pipe the results of an ls into a perl regex.
You may use whatever you want to transform the name (perl, sed, awk, etc.). I'll use a python one-liner:
for file in 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='*; do
mv $file `echo $file | python -c "print raw_input().split('=')[-1]"`.txt;
done
Here's the same script entirely in Python:
import glob, os
PATTERN="transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=*"
for filename in glob.iglob(PATTERN):
newname = filename.split('=')[-1] + ".txt"
print filename, '==>', newname
os.rename(filename, newname)
Side note: you would have had an easier life saving the pages with the right name while grabbing them...
find -name '*v_id=*' | perl -lne'rename($_, qq($1.txt)) if /v_id=(\S+)/'
vimv lets you rename multiple files using Vim's text editing capabilities.
Entering vimv opens a Vim window which lists down all files and you can do pattern matching, visual select, etc to edit the names. After you exit Vim, the files will be renamed.
[Disclaimer: I'm the author of the tool]
I'd use ren-regexp, which is a Perl script that lets you mass-rename files very easily.
21:25:11 $ ls
transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=12345
21:25:12 $ ren-regexp 's/transform.php.*v_id=(\d+)/$1.txt/' transform.php*
transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=12345
1 12345.txt
21:26:33 $ ls
12345.txt
This should also work:
prfx='transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='
ls $prfx* | sed s/$prfx// | xargs -Ipsx mv "$prfx"psx psx
this renamer command would do it:
$ renamer --regex --find 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=(\w+)' --replace '$1.txt' *
Ok, you need to be able to run a windows binary for this.
But if you can run Total Commander, do this:
Select all files with *, and hit ctrl-M
In the Search field, paste "transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id="
(Leave Replace empty)
Press Start
It doesn't get much simpler than that.
You can also rename using regular expressions via this dialog, and you see a realtime preview of how your files are going to be renamed.

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