Shell Programming and Scripting

your code is missing {} after -I see below :-

Code:

echo archDP105144_1_702159963.dbf| xargs -I{} cp {} `echo {}|awk '{sub(/DP1/,"TML");print}'`

BR

if there is only one file, using xargs is not optimal
you could just

Code:

cp archDP105144_1_702159963.dbf `echo archDP105144_1_702159963.dbf | awk '{sub(/DP1/,"TML");print}'`

or

Code:

f=archDP105144_1_702159963.dbf; cp $f "${f%%DP1*}TML${f##*DP1}"

how about something simpler and w/o xargs...

Code:

ls -1 archDP1* | awk '{f=$0;sub("DP1", "TML");system("cp "f" "$0)}'

{} is not expanded by the shell. It is expanded by xargs after it starts executing. However, xargs cannot be exec'd until all of its command line arguments are known. This requires the shell to invoke a subshell to perform the command subsitution in backticks. Note that at this point xargs is not running. echo {} will always yield nothing but {}. In AWK, the sub() function has nothing to do since there's no DP1 to replace, and the output is the same as what's echoed. Then the shell, finally knowing the result of the command substitution, can execute xargs. xargs will then always be passed {} {} as its final two parameters.

In short, this approach cannot be made to work.

I suggest ctsgnb's suggestion:


Regards,
Alister

Thankyou ALL!

---------- Post updated at 05:07 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:51 PM ----------

The code I ended up with!

Code:

#!/bin/ksh
for i in *.dbf
do
    echo
    echo "... renaming $i to ${i/DP1/TML}"  
    echo -e "y - continue / n - Skip / Ctrl+C - abort  --> \c"
    read ans
     if [ "$ans" = "y" ]; then
       mv $i ${i/DP1/TML}
     else
       echo skipping $i
     fi
done