CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringbashunix
crysis405
crysis405

Reputation: 1131

bash file renaming adding string in a specific location

I would like to rename multiple files, but not just appending my string to the end or the beginning of the file. I would like to place it in a specific location. This is the command I am working with right now, but it can only add things at the beginning and the end of the file name.

for f in `ls  ~/tmp/*`; do FILE=`basename $f`; echo "Rename:"$f;echo $FILE; mv "$f" "/home/tmp/JC_"${FILE%.*}"_hg19."${FILE#*.}"";  done

Lets say the file names are as follows hell_1.txt (and lets say there is a ton of them each with a different number for simplicity) I would like to add an o into the file name so the resulting name would be hello_1.txt it would be nice if you had a general solution not just for this example.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1185

Answers (3)

Olivier Dulac
Olivier Dulac

Reputation: 3791

if i understand you wish to change any "hell.*_NNN.txt" to "hel.*o_NNN.txt" (keeping the .* between "hell" and "_NNN.txt" (NNN being any number).

then: 

for x in ~/tmp/*.txt; do 
   mv "$x" "$(echo "$x" | LC_COLLATE=C sed -e 's#\(hell.*\)\(_[0-9]*\.txt$\)#\1o\2#')"
done

I added the LC_COLLATE=C during sed invocation so you can rely on the "[0-9]" matching only digits '0' or '1' or ... or '9'

(If you wonder why adding the LC_COLLATE: with some locales [A-Z] could match every letters A-Z or a-y (except 'z'!) as in such locales letters appears in this order: 'A' 'a' 'B' 'b' ... 'Z' 'z'. And with other locales, who knows?)

(note: you could also replace "[0-9]" with the "[[:digit:]]" notation, but it could be less portable : "old" version of sed won't know about this notation and will try to match any of '[' or ':' or ... or 't' or ':', followed by a ']' (*, so 0,1 or more times) ... That's why I don't like using those special [[:things:]] with sed, tr, etc : i see them as less portable. Use perl instead if you prefer to use those?)

Upvotes: 0

anishsane
anishsane

Reputation: 20980

How about 

rename 's/hell_/hello_/' /tmp/*.txt

Upvotes: 1

Damell
Damell

Reputation: 59

this should work:

for x in ~/tmp/*.txt; do mv $x `echo $x | sed -e 's#hell#hello#'`; done

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions