UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm looking for a simple solution to rename a batch of files. All of the files in this directory start with a date in the format mm.dd.yy followed by a space and then additional descriptive text.

Example:

01.21.10 742 P.xlsx
02.24.09 730 Smith.xlsx

The information following the date can vary in length.

I want to rearrange the date to be yy.mm.dd so the files are sorted by date correctly. So in the examples above they should be renamed:

10.01.21 742 P.xlsx
09.02.24 730 Smith.xlsx

thanks!

Code:

ls *.xlsx |while read LINE
do
  new=$(echo $LINE|awk '{split($1,a,".");$1=a[3]"."a[1]"."a[2];print}')
  mv "$LINE" "$new"
done

Code:

 
# ls
01.21.10 742 P.xlsx  02.24.09 730 Smith.xlsx  t.pl
# perl t.pl
# ls
09.02.24 730 Smith.xlsx  10.01.21 742 P.xlsx  t.pl

Script to run, to do that is,

Code:

 
for (`ls *.xlsx`)
{
        chomp;
        if ( /(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)(.*)/ )  {
                $new = "$3.$1.$2$4";
        }
        #print ">$_<>$new<\n";
        system("mv \"$_\" \"$new\"");
}

Yup, exactly what I needed. Thanks!