I just can't figure this one out.

I have a lot of files name (for example) ABC1234.5678.ext

I need to rename these files U0105678PQRS

So I'm removing everything before the first "."
I'm keeping "5678" in the file name
Adding "U010" to the front of "5678"
Dropping the ".ext" extension

How can I do this?

Create a little script which takes the name of one file as an argument, derives the new name for the file from that argument and then changes its name.

Use "find" to get a list of the files in question one by one, then use the "-exec" clause of find to send these names to the script you have written.

Here it is in detail. First the script:

Save this as "/path/to/script.sh", call it the following way:

to change all the files with extension ".ext" and at least one additional dot (".") in their names.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

I left in the echo so you can test without moving. If it looks correct, take out the echo.

This will work usually, but if the number of files is really big it might lead to an error because expanding the wildcard will produce a string bigger than the size limit of command strings for the shell (according to POSIX this is 4096 characters IIRC).

bakunin

Thanks. I used the for file in *; do

It worked. The other one I'll keep for next time.

Much appreciated!!!!

I believe the wildcard should be safe for functions which are internal to the shell, but I'd welcome any additional insight into this. My own understanding (relatively recently revised) is that the ARG_MAX limit only applies when there is an exec() involved, but of course, different shells might cope differently with internal wildcard handling, too, and have similar limits for that. But anyway, maybe this should go in a separate thread.