batch rename to change only single character - unix

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

Related

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

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

trouble listing directories that contain files with specific file extensions

How to I list only directories that contain certain files. I am running on a Solaris box. Example, I want to list sub-directories of directory ABC that contain files that end with .out, .dat and .log .
Thanks

Something along these lines might work out for you:
find ABC/ \( -name "*.out" -o -name "*.log" \) -print | while read f
do
echo "${f%/*}"
done | sort -u
The sort -u bit could be just uniq instead, but either should work.
Should work on bash or ksh. Probably not so much on /bin/sh - you'd have to replace the variable expansion with something like echo "${f}" | sed -e 's;/[^/]*$;;' or something else that would strip off the last component of the path. dirname "${f}" would be good for that, but I don't recall if Solaris includes that utility...

Remove pattern from filenames

how can I remove the word "myfile" in a list of filenames with this structure?
mywork_myfile_XSOP.txt
mywork_myfile_ATTY.txt
mywork_myfile_ATPY.txt
Desired_output:
mywork_XSOP.txt
mywork_ATTY.txt
mywork_ATPY.txt

The simplest method is to use the common rename command which is available in most Unices.
rename 's/^mywork_myfile_/mywork_/' *
This of course expects you to be on the directory of the files. This will not overwrite files. If you want that, just pass the -f option. Also, take note that there's multiple versions of rename out there which may have different options.

Based on this answer on "Rename all files in "Rename all files in directory from $filename_h to $filename_half?", this can be a way:
for file in mywork_myfile*txt
do
mv "$file" "${file/_myfile/}"
done
Note that it uses the bash string operations as follows:
$ file="mywork_myfile_XSOP.txt"
$ echo ${file/_myfile/}
mywork_XSOP.txt

This would work in any Posix shell...
#!/bin/sh
for i
in mywork_myfile_XSOP.txt \
mywork_myfile_ATTY.txt \
mywork_myfile_ATPY.txt; do
set -x
mv "$i" "$(echo $i | sed -e s/myfile_//)"
set +x
done

Recursively search files named string.xml for certain text

This command will search all directories and subdirectories for files containing "text"
grep -r "text" *
How do i specify to search only in files that are named 'strings.xml'?

You'll want to use find for this, since grep won't work that way recursively (as far as I know). Something like this should work:
find . -name "strings.xml" -exec grep "text" "{}" \;
The find command searches starting in the current directory (.) for a file with the name strings.xml (-name "strings.xml"), and then for each found file, execute the grep command specified. The curly braces ("{}") are a placeholder that find uses to specify the name of the file it found. More detail can be found in man find.
Also note that the -r option to grep is no longer necessary, since find works recursively.

You can use the grep command:
grep -r "text" /path/to/dir/strings.xml

grep supports an --include option whose use is to recurse in directories only searching file matching PATTERN. So, try something like below:
grep -R --include 'strings.xml' text .
I also tried using find which seems to be quite faster than grep:
find ./ -name "strings.xml" -exec grep "text" '{}' \; -print
These links speak about the same issue, might help you:
'grep -R string *.txt' even when top dir doesn't have a .txt file
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/run-grep-only-on-certain-files-using-wildcard-919822/

Try below command
find . -type f | xargs grep "strings\.xml"
This will run grep "strings\.xml" on every file returned by find

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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