Shell Programming and Scripting

Use a loop, for instance:

Code:

for file in *.txt
do
  sed 's/\(.*_\)\(.*\)-\(.*\)\(_.*\)/\1\3-\2\4/' "$file" > "$file"_new
  mv "$file"_new "$file"
done

Regards

Hi guys the above script looks perfect (even to my untrained eye)

and the previous one

$ echo "daf_1961-04_act.txt"|sed 's/\(.*_\)\(.*\)-\(.*\)\(_.*\)/\1\3-\2\4/'
$ daf_04-1961_act.txt

has shown me that the sed script works

however when I run it in a loop


I see the new files being created (They are quire big so they take a while)

However the file names produced as a result of the loop aren't changed (they come out exactly as they went in). It's really making me scratch my head. I think the problem's 99% sorted but somethings' wrong.

Thanks

remove the move (mv) command and you will get the desired result.

I'm afraid that hasn't had the desired effect rana_d

But thanks for the suggestion

vrms

I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, this should give the command to move the files:

Code:

echo "daf_1961-04_act.txt"|sed 's/\(.*_\)\(.*\)-\(.*\)\(_.*\)/mv & \1\3-\2\4/'

Try it in a loop to see if the you get the desired output to mv the selected files:

Code:

for file in *.txt
do
  sed 's/\(.*_\)\(.*\)-\(.*\)\(_.*\)/mv & \1\3-\2\4/' "$file"
done

If the output is correct you can pipe the output of the sed command to sh to mv the files in the loop as follow:

Code:

for file in *.txt
do
  sed 's/\(.*_\)\(.*\)-\(.*\)\(_.*\)/mv & \1\3-\2\4/' "$file" | sh
done

Regards

When I run it sends the whole content of the files in the directory to the screen



[QUOTE]If the output is correct you can pipe the output of the sed command to sh to mv the files in the loop as follow:

Code:

for file in *.txt
do
  sed 's/\(.*_\)\(.*\)-\(.*\)\(_.*\)/mv & \1\3-\2\4/' "$file" | sh
done

Regards[QUOTE]


When I run it, this comes up and the filenames are unchanged

sh: llllll: not found
sh: l: not found
sh: lllllllllllllllllll: not found
sh: rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr: not found
sh: rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr: not found
sh: rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr: not found
sh: rrrrrrrrrrrrrr: not found


Where llllllllllllllll and rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr etc are the contents of some dummy files I'm using to verify the scripts

So I'm afraid something is not quite right again

Thanks

vrms

I was assuming that you have only .txt files with names in the same format.
To select filenames with a format like "daf_1961-04_act.txt" you can do something like:

Code:

for file in `ls | grep ".*_....-.._.*"`
do
  sed 's/\(.*_\)\(.*\)-\(.*\)\(_.*\)/mv & \1\3-\2\4/' "$file"
done

Regards