rename long file names while keeping a part of the name

Question

I have a lot of files which have a certain pattern:

some123_name4.with5.number01-02_and6-other7.stuff.txt some123_name4.with5.number05-06_and6-other7.stuff.txt some123_name4.with5.number11-12_and6-other7.stuff.txt

and I would like to rename them keeping the part in the middle number??-??. For example like:

different45_start.keep76.number01-02_but.change34_rest.txt different45_start.keep76.number05-06_but.change34_rest.txt different45_start.keep76.number11-12_but.change34_rest.txt

I have played around with expr, %% and ? but I didn't even manage to extract the number??-?? part of the filename.

Bjorn Munch · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-21 21:34:37Z

2

This ought to do it (replace with actual patterns)

#!/bin/bash for f in some123* ; do mv $f `echo $f | sed -e 's/some123_name4.with5/different45_start.keep76/' -e 's/and6-other7.stuff/but.change34_rest/'` done

answered Apr 21, 2015 at 21:34

Bjorn Munch

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2 Comments

Bjorn Munch Over a year ago

Note that the above assumes the old file names all start and end with identical patterns

user4050567 Over a year ago

This very nice, simple and easy.

Klaus Zeuge · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-21 21:47:28Z

May I suggest you use regexp'es to extract your numbers from the old name into the new name? Then it's just a question about

creating a new subdirectory (just in case you make a mistake)
using "ls" to list the file names (with options for 1 (one) name per line, not following down into subdirs)
iterating over the file names

In each iteration,

set the new name
run the copy commande "cp" using the old and the new names (but as a trick, copy down into your new subdirectory)

All in all, something like this:

mkdir NEW ls -1d some* \ | while read FILE; do NEWFILE=`echo "$FILE" \ | sed 's|^some12\\([0-9]\\)_name\\([0-9]\\)[.]with\\([0-9]\\)[.]number\\([0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]\\)_and\\([0-9]\\)-other\\([0-9]\\)[.]stuff[.]txt$|different\\2\\3_start.keep\\6\\5.number\\4_but.change\\1\\2_rest.txt|'` cp "$FILE" NEW/"$NEWFILE" done

As you can see, due to the backticks (`) you have to use extra backslashes in the regexp.

Does this help you, as a start?

That looks very interesting! Thanks for showing something new and explain it :)

leu · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-21 21:57:02Z

a possible solution using expr looks like the following:

for f in *number??-??*; do fixedPart=$(expr "$f" : '.*\(number[0-9][0-9]-[0-9][0-9]\).*') newName="different45_start.keep76.${fixedPart}_but.change34_rest.txt" mv "$f" "$newName" done

This is the way I was actually searching for, thanks a lot for that!

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