Renaming files in a UNIX directory - shell scripting

Question

I have been trying to write a script that will take the current working directory, scan every file and check if it is a .txt file. Then take every file (that's a text file), and check to see if it contains an underscore anywhere in its name and if it does to change the underscore to a hyphen.

I know that this is a tall order, but here is the rough code I have so far:

#!/bin/bash
count=1
while((count <= $#))
       do
          case $count in
               "*.txt") sed 's/_/-' $count
          esac
          ((count++))
done

What I was thinking is that this would take the files in the current working directory as the arguments and check every file(represented by $count or the file at "count"). Then for every file, it would check if it ended in .txt and if it did it would change every underscore to a hyphen using sed. I think one of the main problems I am having is that the script is not reading the files from the current working directory. I tried included the directory after the command to run the script, but I think it took each line instead of each file (since there are 4 or so files on every line).

Anyway, any help would be greatly appreciated! Also, I'm sorry that my code is so bad, I am very new to UNIX.

One problem is that $count is the value of the variable count, which is some integer. If you want to iterate over the positional parameters, you'd write: for file in "$@"; do ... or the shorthand for file; do ... — glenn jackman
– glenn jackman, Commented Oct 7, 2011 at 19:03

Roland Illig · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-07 18:56:22Z

2

for fname in ./*_*.txt; do
  new_fname=$(printf '%s' "$fname" | sed 's,_,-,')
  mv "$fname" "$new_fname"
done

answered Oct 7, 2011 at 18:56

Roland Illig

41.9k12 gold badges91 silver badges127 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

glenn jackman Over a year ago

If the shell is bash, one can write: new_fname=${fname//_/-}

Michał Šrajer · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-07 18:55:43Z

1

why not:

rename 's/_/-/' *.txt

answered Oct 7, 2011 at 18:55

Michał Šrajer

31.5k7 gold badges65 silver badges88 bronze badges

2 Comments

Roland Illig Over a year ago

rename: command not found. The question is about Unix, not a particular Linux distribution. But given that Perl is installed almost everywhere, it's a nice and flexible solution.

Michał Šrajer Over a year ago

@RolandIllig: I know rename is not everywhere, but from shebang I assumed it's executed on some modern unix-like system.

William Pursell · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-07 18:50:54Z

0

$ ls *.txt | while read -r file; do echo $file | 
  grep > /dev/null _ && mv $file $(echo $file | tr _ -); done

(untested)

answered Oct 7, 2011 at 18:50

William Pursell

214k49 gold badges279 silver badges317 bronze badges

3 Comments

Michał Šrajer Over a year ago

This will fail on files containing spaces in filename. You may even loose some data if yo do wrong mv.

William Pursell Over a year ago

Yes, it will fail on files containing spaces. People who put spaces in their file names deserve to lose all their data. :)

Michał Šrajer Over a year ago

I kind of agree... :-) However we are here to learn of each other that is why I added this comment. Regards.

Andrewziac · Accepted Answer · 2011-10-09 19:27:35Z

0

Thanks for all your input guys! All in all, I think the solution I found was the most appropriate for my skill level was:

ls *.txt | while read -r file; do echo file |
   mv $file $(echo $file | sed 's,_,-,');
done

This got what I needed done, and for my purposes I am not too worried about the spaces. But thanks for all your wonderful suggestions, you are all very intelligent!

answered Oct 9, 2011 at 19:27

Andrewziac

1552 silver badges16 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Renaming files in a UNIX directory - shell scripting

4 Answers 4

1 Comment

2 Comments

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

4 Answers 4

1 Comment

2 Comments

3 Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related