Bulk rename files in Redhat 2

[zhenning]

I use Redhat AS 3 and I want to remove '2005' in a bulk of file names. I tried following command:

rename -v 's/92005/9/' *2005*

Then I got no output and the files names are not changed. What could be wrong here?

Thanks,
Zhenning

 

[QatQat]

rename -v 's/2005//' *

I would first try it out with the -n option.

rename -vn 's/2005//' *

Cheers

QatQat




Life is what happens when you are making other plans.

 

[zhenning]

Hi QatQat,

I tried your command and I got the same thing, no output and file names are not changed.. Weird..

Thanks,
Zhenning

 

[QatQat]

can you post a sample of your file names?

QatQat

Life is what happens when you are making other plans.

 

[zhenning]

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 19 2005 17142509192005.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 19 2005 17410709192005.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 19 2005 17413209192005.txt

[root@kojak dxu]# rename -vn 's/2005//' *
[root@kojak dxu]# ll *2005*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 19 2005 17142509192005.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 19 2005 17410709192005.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Sep 19 2005 17413209192005.txt

 

[gbaughma]

This may sound silly... but would something like:

mv ??????????2005.txt ??????????.txt

work?

Just my 2¢
"Life gets mighty precious when there's less of it to waste." -Bonnie Raitt "Nick of Time"
--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[zhenning]

It seems like when moving multiple files, the DEST must be a directory:

[root@kojak dxu]# mv ??????????2005.txt ??????????.txt
mv: when moving multiple files, last argument must be a directory
Try `mv --help' for more information.

 

[mrballcb]

Here's a different tact. Run it through a loop and modify each filename individually:

[todd@tlyons ~/test]$ touch 17142509192005.txt 17410709192005.txt 17413209192005.txt
[todd@tlyons ~/test]$ ls
17142509192005.txt  17410709192005.txt  17413209192005.txt
[todd@tlyons ~/test]$ for F in *.txt; do newF=`echo $F | sed s/2005//`; mv $F $newF; done
[todd@tlyons ~/test]$ ls
1714250919.txt  1741070919.txt  1741320919.txt
[todd@tlyons ~/test]$

Adjust the for F in *.txt portion if you want to change which files it processes. If for some reason you have a VERY large list of files (exceeds a hard limit on commandline length), then you may have to do files in groups.

 

[ZaSter]

Using the 'rename' command works if you use it this way:

$ ls
17142509192005.txt 17410709192005.txt 17413209192005.txt

$ rename 2005.txt .txt *

$ ls
1714250919.txt 1741070919.txt 1741320919.txt

 

[zhenning]

It works!! Thanks Guys!

Zhenning