Given an example that my file name is
A_BC_DEF_GH_IJ_LMNO_PQ_11111111_1111111111_111111_AB.dat.meta
i am trying to rename this with unix command but when i tried using this cmd
for f in *.meta; do mv "$f" "$(echo $f|sed s/[0-9]/?/g|sed 's/-/*/g')" ; done
my file is renamed to
A_BC_DEF_GH_IJ_LMNO_PQ_????????_????????????????????_???????_AB.dat.meta
it is expected to rename the file to
A_BC_DEF_GH_IJ_LMNO_PQ__????????_????????????????????_*_AB.dat.meta
Im quite new with unix cmd , any approach that i should try ?
Since [0-9] and ? are undergoing filename expansion, you should quote them to avoid nasty error messages. With this in mind, I did a
echo A_BC_DEF_GH_IJ_LMNO_PQ_11111111_1111111111_111111_AB.dat.meta | sed 's/[0-9]/?/g'|sed 's/-/*/g'
and got as output A_BC_DEF_GH_IJ_LMNO_PQ????????????????????????AB.dat.meta, which makes sense to me. Why would you expect an asterisk in the resulting filename? In your second sed command, you are turning the hyphens into asterisks, but there is no hyphen in the input.
Of course it is pretty unsane to use question marks and asterisks in a file name, as this is just begging for trouble, but there is no law that you must not do this.
A_BC_DEF_GH_IJ_LMNO_PQ_11111111_1111111111_111111_AB.dat.meta
Match it with a regex. Remember which characters need to be escaped in sed. Remember about proper quoting - if you write $ it should be inside ". Note that if there are no files named *.meta it will just iterate over a string *.meta unless nullglob is set.
$ touch A_BC_DEF_GH_IJ_LMNO_PQ_11111111_1111111111_111111_AB.dat.meta
$ for f in *.meta; do mv "$f" "$(echo "$f" | sed 's/[0-9]/?/g; s/_\(?*\)_\(?*\)_\(?*\)_\([^_]*\)$/__\1_\2_*_\4/')" ; done
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This question already has answers here:
Rename multiple files based on pattern in Unix
(24 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
Write a simple script that will automatically rename a number of files. As an example we want the file *001.jpg renamed to user defined string + 001.jpg (ex: MyVacation20110725_001.jpg) The usage for this script is to get the digital camera photos to have file names that make some sense.
I need to write a shell script for this. Can someone suggest how to begin?
An example to help you get off the ground.
for f in *.jpg; do mv "$f" "$(echo "$f" | sed s/IMG/VACATION/)"; done
In this example, I am assuming that all your image files contain the string IMG and you want to replace IMG with VACATION.
The shell automatically evaluates *.jpg to all the matching files.
The second argument of mv (the new name of the file) is the output of the sed command that replaces IMG with VACATION.
If your filenames include whitespace pay careful attention to the "$f" notation. You need the double-quotes to preserve the whitespace.
You can use rename utility to rename multiple files by a pattern. For example following command will prepend string MyVacation2011_ to all the files with jpg extension.
rename 's/^/MyVacation2011_/g' *.jpg
or
rename <pattern> <replacement> <file-list>
this example, I am assuming that all your image files begin with "IMG" and you want to replace "IMG" with "VACATION"
solution : first identified all jpg files and then replace keyword
find . -name '*jpg' -exec bash -c 'echo mv $0 ${0/IMG/VACATION}' {} \;
for file in *.jpg ; do mv $file ${file//IMG/myVacation} ; done
Again assuming that all your image files have the string "IMG" and you want to replace "IMG" with "myVacation".
With bash you can directly convert the string with parameter expansion.
Example: if the file is IMG_327.jpg, the mv command will be executed as if you do mv IMG_327.jpg myVacation_327.jpg. And this will be done for each file found in the directory matching *.jpg.
IMG_001.jpg -> myVacation_001.jpg
IMG_002.jpg -> myVacation_002.jpg
IMG_1023.jpg -> myVacation_1023.jpg
etcetera...
find . -type f |
sed -n "s/\(.*\)factory\.py$/& \1service\.py/p" |
xargs -p -n 2 mv
eg will rename all files in the cwd with names ending in "factory.py" to be replaced with names ending in "service.py"
explanation:
In the sed cmd, the -n flag will suppress normal behavior of echoing input to output after the s/// command is applied, and the p option on s/// will force writing to output if a substitution is made. Since a sub will only be made on match, sed will only have output for files ending in "factory.py"
In the s/// replacement string, we use "& " to interpolate the entire matching string, followed by a space character, into the replacement. Because of this, it's vital that our RE matches the entire filename. after the space char, we use "\1service.py" to interpolate the string we gulped before "factory.py", followed by "service.py", replacing it. So for more complex transformations youll have to change the args to s/// (with an re still matching the entire filename)
Example output:
foo_factory.py foo_service.py
bar_factory.py bar_service.py
We use xargs with -n 2 to consume the output of sed 2 delimited strings at a time, passing these to mv (i also put the -p option in there so you can feel safe when running this). voila.
NOTE: If you are facing more complicated file and folder scenarios, this post explains find (and some alternatives) in greater detail.
Another option is:
for i in *001.jpg
do
echo "mv $i yourstring${i#*001.jpg}"
done
remove echo after you have it right.
Parameter substitution with # will keep only the last part, so you can change its name.
Can't comment on Susam Pal's answer but if you're dealing with spaces, I'd surround with quotes:
for f in *.jpg; do mv "$f" "`echo $f | sed s/\ /\-/g`"; done;
You can try this:
for file in *.jpg;
do
mv $file $somestring_${file:((-7))}
done
You can see "parameter expansion" in man bash to understand the above better.
I have a folder with lots of files which name has the following structure:
01.artist_name - song_name.mp3
I want to go through all of them and rename them using the regexp:
/^d+\./
so i get only :
artist_name - song_name.mp3
How can i do this in bash?
You can do this in BASH:
for f in [0-9]*.mp3; do
mv "$f" "${f#*.}"
done
Use the Perl rename utility utility. It might be installed on your version of Linux or easy to find.
rename 's/^\d+\.//' -n *.mp3
With the -n flag, it will be a dry run, printing what would be renamed, without actually renaming. If the output looks good, drop the -n flag.
Use 'sed' bash command to do so:
for f in *.mp3;
do
new_name="$(echo $f | sed 's/[^.]*.//')"
mv $f $new_name
done
...in this case, regular expression [^.].* matches everything before first period of a string.
I have thousands of mp3 files but all with unusual file names such as 1-2songone.mp3, 2songtwo.mp3, 2_2_3_songthree.mp3. I want to remove all the numbers, dashes and underscores in the beginning of these files and get the result:
songone.mp3
songtwo.mp3
songthree.mp3
This can be done using extended globbing:
$ ls
1-2songone.mp3 2_2_3_songthree.mp3 2songtwo.mp3
$ shopt -s extglob
$ for fname in *.mp3; do mv -- "$fname" "${fname##*([-_[:digit:]])}"; done
$ ls
songone.mp3 songthree.mp3 songtwo.mp3
This uses parameter expansion: ${fname##pattern} removes the longest possible match from the beginning of fname. As the pattern, we use *([-_[:digit:]]), where *(pattern) stands for "zero or more matches of pattern", and the actual pattern is a bracket expression for hyhpens, underscores and digits.
Remarks:
The -- after mv indicates the end of options for move and makes sure that filenames starting with - aren't interpreted as options.
The *() expression requires the extglob shell option. As pointed out, if you don't want extended globs later, you have to unset it again with shopt -u extglob.
As per Gordon Davisson's comment: this will clobber files if you have, for example, something like 1file.mp3 and 2file.mp3. To avoid that, you can either use mv -i (or --interactive), which will prompt you before overwriting a file, or mv -n (or --noclobber), which will just not overwrite any files.
triplee points out that this needlessly moves files onto themselves if they don't start with slash, underscore or digit. To avoid that, we can iterate only over matching files with
for fname in [-_[:digit:]]*.mp3; do mv -- "$fname" "${fname##*([-_[:digit:]])}"; done
which makes sure that there is something to rename.
Benjamin W.'s answer is helpful and efficient, but has two drawbacks:
It requires setting global shell option extglob, which should be restored to its previous value afterward (the alternative, at the cost of creating an extra process, is to use a subshell: (shopt -s extglob; for fname ...)).
The extglob syntax, an extension to regular glob syntax, is familiar to few people and still less powerful than true regular expressions.
Using Bash's regex-matching operator, =~:
for f in *.mp3; do [[ $f =~ ^[0-9_-]+(.+)$ ]] && echo mv "$f" "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"; done
Remove the echo to perform actual renaming.
$f =~ ^[0-9_-]+(.+)$ matches the longest nonempty sequence of digits, hyphens, and underscores at the start of the filename, followed by any nonempty sequence of characters captured in a parenthesized subexpression (capture group).
If the match succeeds (&&), the mv command is invoked, with the captured subexpression - accessible via element 1 of special BASH array variable ${BASH_REMATCH[#]} - forming the target filename.
You may do it this way too :
find . -type f -name "*.mp3" -print0 | while read -r -d '' line
do
mv "$line" "$( sed -E 's!(.*)/[^[:alpha:]]*([[:alpha:]].*mp3)$!\1/\2!' <<<"$line")" 2>/dev/null
done
Using sed gives you more control over the regex, I guess. Also, the 2>/dev/null is for ignoring the mv error for already converted/correct filenames.
Note:
This will recursively change the filenames across subfolders too.
I need to look for and replace certain strings for all files in a directory, including sub-directories. I think I'm nearly there using the following method which illustrates my general approach. I do much more inside the -exec than just this replace, but have removed this for clarity.
#!/bin/bash
#call with params: in_directory out_directory
in_directory=$1
out_directory=$2
export in_directory
export out_directory
#Duplicate the in_directory folder structure in out_directory
cd "$in_directory" &&
find . -type d -exec mkdir -p -- "$out_directory"/{} \;
find $in_directory -type f -name '*' -exec sh -c '
for file do
#Quite a lot of other stuff, including some fiddling with $file to
#get rel_file, the part of the path to a file from
#in_directory. E.g if in_directory is ./ then file ./ABC/123.txt
#will have rel_file ABC/123.txt
cat $file|tr -d '|' |sed -e 's/,/|/g' > $out_directory/$rel_file
done
' sh {} +
One issue is likely how I've tried to write the file to pipe the output to. However, this isn't the main/only issue as when I replace it with an explicit test path I still get the error
|sed -e 's/,/|/g' |No such file or directory
which makes me think the cat $file part is the problem?
Any help is massively appreciated as always - this is only the second BASH script I've ever had to write so I expect I've made a fairly basic mistake!
Your "inner" single quotes are being seen as "outer" single quotes and causing you problems. You think you are quoting the | in the tr command but what you are actually doing is ending the initial single-quoted string having an unquoted | and then starting a new single-quoted string. That second single-quoted string then ends at the single-quote that you believe is starting the sed script but is instead ending the previous single-quoted string, etc.
Use double quotes for those embedded single quotes if you can. Where you can't do that you have to use the '\'' sequence to get a literal single-quote in the single-quoted string.
I want to rename the files in a directory which are named with this pattern:
string1-number.html
for example:
English-5.html
what I want to do is to rename the files like this:
string2-number.string3
for example:
Dictionary-5.en
How can I do this?
I used this script, but nothing happened:
echo "English-5.html" | sed 's%\({English}\).\(\.*\)\(html\)%dictionary\2\en%'
I would suggest using the mmv tool: http://linux.dsplabs.com.au/mmv-copy-append-link-move-multiple-files-under-linux-shell-bash-by-wildcard-patterns-p5/
With that you can do:
mmv *-*.html Dictionary-#2.en
echo "English-5.html" | sed 's%English\(-[0-9][0-9]*.\)html%dictionary\1en%'
Explanation:
I'm looking for English
followed by a dash, one or more numbers, and a dot -[0-9][0-9]*. (I surround this part with escaped parenthesis to make it a group (group 1)).
followed by html
In the replacement text, I use \1 to output the contents of group 1, as well as the changed text.
You have 2 errors: The {...} is not required, and you confused \. and .
\. matches a literal dot, while . matches a single character.
echo "English-5.html" |
sed 's%\(English\)\(.*\)\.\(html\)%dictionary\2.en%'
This answer shows some minor optimizations for sed commands already posted and shows how to actually rename the files (in the current folder):
for f in *; do mv "$f" $(echo "$f" |\
sed 's/^English-\([0-9]\+\)\.html$/dictionary-\1\.en/'); done