UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm rusty with cp, so I was wondering: is it possible to cp all the .doc files in a folder and make them .txt files? Can you use cp to do that?

all at once? no.

you could do this:

Code:

for FILE in /path/from/*.doc
do
        cp "$FILE" "/path/to/${FILE/%doc/txt}"
done

Just renaming a .doc file into .txt won't actually make a .doc file into a .txt file, of course.

You'd need the "mv" command to do that.

However the 'mv' command will rename/delete the original *.doc file.

You might be better off, logically, copying the original *.doc files to another separate directory, and then perform a 'mv *.doc to *.txt

That way you still have all your original files in native format.

As stated previously, just changing the extension, does not change the filetype.

EDIT: You'd need the "mv" command to do that. Does NOT mean the 'mv' command will convert the file.
I have confidence methyl knows this and just didn't explain it very well.