Length of filename

[YYYYUU]

I am using Korn Shell scripting for the following:

I am searching through a directory and getting all the filenames. if the file names have four characters before the extension, then I need to add an X to this to make five.

eg

FILE.txt would need to be FILEX.txt
but
FILES.txt would be fine.

So far

FILES=`ls *.txt 2>/dev/null`

for FILENAME in ${FILES}
do

SHORTNAME=`echo ${FILENAME} | cut -d"." -f1`

But I don't know how to get the length of SHORTNAME variable. Do I need to use awk? Can I use this with Korn Shell.

Please advise, thanks.

 

[dickiebird]

You could use the single character replacement the "?" to find file.txt
eg
FILES=`ls ????.txt 2>/dev/null`

for FILENAME in ${FILES}
do
SHORTNAME=`echo ${FILENAME} | cut -d"." -f1`
# To find Length of variable is ${#SHORTNAME} so
if [ ${#SHORTNAME} -ne 4 ];then
echo 'impossible !'
fi

HTH

Dickie Bird (-)))

 

[SamBones]

The Korn shell has variable editing that's cleaner than piping variables to cut or awk. The following does the same thing...
[tt]
FILES=$(ls ????.txt 2>/dev/null)

for FILENAME in ${FILES}
do
NAMEPART=${FILENAME%.*}
EXTENSION=${FILENAME##*.}
NEWNAME=${NAMEPART}X.${EXTENSION}

if [[ -f ${NEWNAME} ]]
then
print -u2 "ERROR: ${NEWNAME} already exists!"
else
mv ${FILENAME} ${NEWNAME}
fi
done
[/tt]
Hope this helps!