UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

No undo sadly, but there's always a way to fix a mistake
In this case it's not going to be a problem to fix as the data we actually care about is in the file itself rather than the name, provided it didn't rename any files to be the same name as another file we're good.

So, just run it again with the following changes:
In order to have it work with the newly named files, where is says:

Code:

for file in xx*; do...

Change it to:

Code:

for file in *.txt; do...

In order to name them correctly this time, ie to use the third field seperated by |, where is says

Code:

cut -d '|' -f 2`.txt

Change it to

Code:

cut -d '|' -f 3`.txt

Stuff to consider:
Any other files in there that end in .txt will get renamed by this so either move them someplace else for a minute, or change that *.txt bit to be something that only matches the files you want to work with.

If you are worried it might have ended up with a duplicate name along the way, you can check you've not lost any files but running:

Code:

ls -1 *.txt | wc -l

The number returned will be the number of files it found.

My gosh I did not realize you replied to my last message!

I was checking a few times per day and scrolling down and kept seeing my last message still at the bottom.... and I didn't notice that I could click "next page" to see if anyone replied!!

Well now that I embarassed myself,

since I didn't see that response I managed to get around the problem by using vim and applying the command:

argdo exec 'normal 15x'

which removes the first 15 characters from every file, and so the first set of bars were removed from each file and I was able to apply your first command successfully.

But I also thank you for posting the way to do it with just unix (without vim) as I am sure that may be useful in the future.


My problem is solved! THank you once again SmilingDragon!