UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Trying to use mv in a shell script but for some reason this does not work:

Code:

for f in *.wav;do mv $f $f.bwf;done

I get this:

Code:

usage: mv [-f | -i | -n] [-v] source target
       mv [-f | -i | -n] [-v] source ... directory

So it's like I'm using 'mv' wrong but I can't see how.

This works so the contens of the folder is read properly in the for-loop:

Code:

for f in *.wav;do echo $f;done

---------- Post updated at 01:56 AM ---------- Previous update was at 01:43 AM ----------

There are blank spaces in the filenames, do I need to take that into account?

Yes! Try:

Code:

for f in *.wav;do mv "$f" "$f.bwf";done

Yes, that works. Thanks!
But I realized i need to remove the ".wav" before adding the ".bwf".
Which is the most convenient method for that?

---------- Post updated at 10:33 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:15 AM ----------

A tiny remark for others like me who've missed this.

I edited my script in the standard macOS Texteditor and the quotation character I get there is not the right one for bash. At least not with a Swedish keyboard.
The one used in Don's post works and looks like this:

Code:

"

The one I get from the Texteditor does not work and looks like this:

Code:

”

A tiny but significant difference. Almost invisible in some typefaces!

So, we move up to the next level in using shell variables (adding parameter expansions to the steps involved):

Code:

for f in *.wav;do mv "$f" "${f%wav}bwf";done

And, concerning your "tiny remark"; we usually recommend that you learn to use vi when editing shell scripts instead of using "pretty-printing editors" like TextEdit. The vi editor may have a steep learning curve, but you will learn all about using regular expressions (that you can use in sed and grep and find) and editing commands that you can use not only in vi but also in sed, shell command history expansions, ed, ex, and cursor motion commands that apply in many other interactive commands, AND you'll get the single-quotes, double-quotes, and back-quotes you need without a pretty-printing editor's thinking that other characters might look prettier but then make your scripts fail miserably since shells don't recognize them as valid syntax.

Thanks, that works nicely.

I should have a look at vi.