UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have Approx 1000 files that all need to be copied from one directory to another. However, each file has to be renamed while it is copied. I have a Tab delimited text file containing all of the old and new file names (they are not all the same character length). Is there a way to read in the old and new file names from this text file into a script that can perform the copy and rename on all the .mat files in the directory.

Example of filenames.txt.
old_name1.mat newfile_name1.mat
old_name2.mat newfile_name2.mat
old_name3.mat newfile_name3.mat

Thank you in advance for any help you can give.

Something like this.....

for foobar in * ; do mv $foobar newfile$foobar ; done

.... could help

I was just giving the "newfile" as an example. Each filename is very complex (30ish characters) and the naming scheme between the old and new file is changing completely. That is why I need a script to read the first item in each line of the text file and rename it to the second item in that line then go on to the next for all 1000+ files. If it helps I could format the text file into something else like .csv or whatever.

Thanks

you can use sed.
it'd help if you tell what conversion you need exactly, though.

fdarkangel is right

use sed to read n character from each file , then put it in a variable.
For each file, reads the value from $VARIABLE and then mv to the desire pattern.

but be aware that sed could be a little bit tricky.

I wish could tell you the exact file names but I can not do to the nature of the project. However, I can tell you the old name starts with the date in YYMMDD format then a _ followed by anywhere between 15 to 30 characters detailing the specifics of the file. The new naming format is totally different, different order of information and the date is pushed to the end of the name in MMDDYY format. The old and new names may or may not have the same character lengths and the character lengths vary between files. That is why I was hoping to figure out how to read in the names to a script from the text file. Since I already have a Tab delimited text file containing the old verses new names for all 1000+ files.

It will be something like this YYMMDD_LongDesciption_of_File.mat changed to Totally_different_Char_string_MMDDYY.mat about a thousand times.

Sorry about my lack of knowledge about Unix but I kind of just got thrown into full force in the last month or so. I will do some research on the sed command and try to figure out how to use it. Thanks for your help and any additional help/code anyone can give.

Try something like:

Code:

#! /usr/bin/ksh

exec < /file/with names
while read oldname newname ; do
       echo cp /old/dir/$oldname /new/dir/$newname
done
exit 0

With that echo, it won't actually copy anything, it will just display what it would do if you remove the echo. So try it like that first.