I've made a habit of including a four-letter "tail" on image file names I download from the Web, so I can both match them with IPTC Transmission References of my own making and rename them later using either a GUI renamer or a script I've written myself. Now I want to automate the process of writing the TRs to the files by way of Exiv2, leaving just the renaming stage of my routine before moving on to "filing them away" in categorized subfolders, CDs, etc.

Using OpenOffice Calc, I was able to create a list of these four-letter suffixes and the TRs to which they correspond, sort by the former and output to a text file. I added an extra field of IPTC Categories (also of my own making -- doesn't seem to matter when Categories is in the process of being dropped from the IIM). The script I have works with one file at a time, as my line-by-line command-line tests in a terminal emulator have proven, but something goes haywire when applied (as I have done so) to a whole folder of files and the complete list of suffixes, TRs and categories all at once.

I doubt I'm either using the right loop types to process this data, nor am I at all sure that I have the loops that are there nested correctly in the script. The output I've got so far happens to be the "natural" name of the last suffix in the list. What I want is the "natural" name corresponding to the suffix of the file being "looked at" by the script.

Here's the script as it reads so far:

Code:

for a in $(ls *.jpg); # Find files ending in "jpg" in the current directory
do
	bargirl=$(echo $a)
	while read 'line';
	do
		souse=$(echo $line)
		drunk=${souse%:*}
		verydrunk=$(echo $souse | cut -d":" -f2)
		firstdrink=$(echo $verydrunk | cut -d, -f1)
		seconddrink=$(echo $verydrunk | cut -d, -f2)
		thirddrink=$(echo $verydrunk | cut -d, -f3)
done<downloads-xreference.txt # The text file with the three columns (suffix, natural name and Category). Terminate the 'while read' loop
jackdaniels=$(echo ${bargirl:(-4)}) # Take the ".jpg" off the file name	
singlemalt=$(echo $bargirl | cut -d'.' -f1) # Ditto
puregrain=$(echo ${singlemalt%????}) # Now strip the suffix off -- comes from the renaming script
jimbeam=$(echo ${singlemalt:(-4)}) # "What was that suffix code again?"
if [[ $jimbeam -eq $seconddrink ]]; # Does it exist in column 3 of the text file? Does it match the one on the file we're looking at? 
then
	chaser=$firstdrink # Variable "chaser" should be the matched 4-letter suffix.
	echo $chaser # "Show me the money."
fi
done #Terminates the 'for' loop

BZT