current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

Stack Exchange
tour help
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Unix & Linux Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 0 down vote favorite

This question already has an answer here:

I have files in unix directory in below format using sed or some other commands.

Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver1.expdp
Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver2.expdp
Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver3.expdp
Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver4.expdp

I want to rename these files in below format

Owner.Env.File_100613_2300_ver1.expdp
Owner.Env.File_100613_2300_ver2.expdp
Owner.Env.File_100613_2300_ver3.expdp
Owner.Env.File_100613_2300_ver4.expdp
share|improve this question

marked as duplicate by manatwork, Patrick, slm♦, Shadur, Thor May 3 '13 at 13:29

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

2 Answers 2

up vote 2 down vote 
for file in Owner.Env.File_10513_1200_ver*.expdp; do
    mv "$file" "${file/010513_1200/100613_2300}"
done
share|improve this answer
    
Hi This is giving me error as ksh[2]: "${file/010513_1200/100613_2300}": 0403-011 The specified substitution is not valid for this command. –  Shriraj May 3 '13 at 14:36
    
@Shriraj Chris' solution works in bash. So you may run it as a bash script (copy it into a file with #!/bin/bash as first line). I would expect people who use ksh as default shell to be aware what causes such problems. Would make sense to mention in advance that you are a ksh user, too. –  Hauke Laging May 3 '13 at 14:52
    
@Shiraj - Your question has the tag "bash-scripting"... –  Chris Down May 3 '13 at 15:38
up vote 0 down vote

If it's not too many (several ten thousand) files then this should do the job (check afterwards with ls Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver*.expdp whether files are left and repeat the command if so):

rename File_010513_1200_ File_100613_2300_ Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver*.expdp

With GNU an alternative for huge numbers of files (and files with strange names) is:

find . -regex ".*/Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver[1-9][0-9]*.expdp" -print0 | \
  xargs -0 rename File_010513_1200_ File_100613_2300_
share|improve this answer
    
it is giving me error as find: 0652-017 -regex is not a valid option. –  Shriraj May 3 '13 at 14:45
    
@Shriraj So obviously not GNU find (or maybe one from stone age). Try -name "Owner.Env.File_010513_1200_ver*.expdp" instead. –  Hauke Laging May 3 '13 at 14:49
1  
You could also use find's -exec (or -execdir) option and avoid the invocation of xargs. Also, some systems (like Debian/Ubuntu and co.) use perl-rename as their rename command, which has a perl substitution syntax (rename 's/replacethis/withthis/') and can use perl regex. –  evilsoup Jun 28 '13 at 12:03
    
@evilsoup You are right with rename but you don't get the xargs performance feature with find. Or: Show me the working code... :-) –  Hauke Laging Jun 28 '13 at 12:19
1  
find . -name 'blahblah' -exec rename fromthis tothis '{}' + will feed multiple arguments to the rename, if that's what you mean. Using ; as a terminator for -exec will call rename once for each file, while using + means that '{}' will expand to a list of files, rather than a single file. See the GNU find documentation for some more information. I'm not sure whether it's POSIX... but then, neither is your existing solution with -print0 ;) –  evilsoup Jun 28 '13 at 12:32

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.