Shell Programming and Scripting

i have a little over 100 files named page1.jpg through page106.jpg. How can I rename them all to remove the page word and add 00 in front of the remaining numbers? I realize this might be multiple commands but cp page*.jpg *.jpg didn't work like I thought it would.

Welcome to the forum.

First of all cp will not rename the file, it will just create a copy of the original file. If you want to rename a file you need to use mv.

If you are using bash, try:

Code:

for file in page*.jpg
do
    mv ${file} ${file/page/00}
done

Did you consider searching these fora first? There's umpteen solutions to your problem!

Try

Code:

for FN in *.jpg; do echo mv "$FN" "00${FN#????}"; done
mv page106.jpg 00106.jpg
mv page14.jpg 0014.jpg
mv page1.jpg 001.jpg

Welcome zimmerru,

You will have to work out the process for doing one, then call do that in a loop for all. I have a few to questions pose in response first:-Most importantly, What have you tried so far?

The suggestion from chacko193 may or may not work depending on your OS & shell, hence the questions above.

There are probably many ways to achieve most tasks, so giving us an idea of your style and thoughts will help us guide you to an answer most suitable to you so you can adjust it to suit your needs in future.

By way of explanation, cp page*.jpg *.jpg will be expanded to actually be:-

Code:

cp page1.jpg page2.jpg page3.jpg .... pagennn.jpg  abc.jpg page1.jpg page2.jpg page3.jpg .... pagennn.jpg

The process will copy all files that match either page*.jpg or *.jpg over the last file alphabetically that matches *.jpg so if you have page999.jpg, that will have been overwritten, unless your OS (unspecified) refuses to multiple copy unless the last item in the list is a directory.


We're all here to learn and getting the relevant information will help us all.

Thank you all for your replies. I did do some initial searching but didn't find one that pertained to my situation... then again i wasn't searching this site specifically, but was using Google instead. Thank you for not flaming me too much!

I'll see what I can come up with for a single file and then use your loop example.. will post when I have it worked out.

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This worked perfectly. Dropped it in a file, saved it, chmod +x and executed it and it worked great!