UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

i have a set of *.lst files. now i want to change the names from "lst" to "dat". how to do it?
ex.:
-rw-r--r-- 1 rram group 22 Sep 21 13:10 a.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 rram group 22 Sep 21 13:09 b.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 rram group 22 Sep 21 13:10 c.lst
-rw-r--r-- 1 rram group 22 Sep 21 13:10 d.lst

i want to change all the files suffix to "dat" from "lst"

Replies appreciated.

raguram R

If you're using bash, something like

Code:

for file in /path/to/files/*
do
   mv $file `expr substr $file 1 $(( ${#file} - 4 ))`.dat
done

should do the trick...

Cheers
ZB

perhaps along the pipes..

go into the directory and try something like..

....

find . -name "*.lst" -exec mv "*.dat"

...fortunately it won't work...but when if would be nice

This will not work. For one thing, you haven't used the actual "found" string (i.e. {} ) and also, you've only supplied one argument to the mv command.

The solution I posted for "bash" (or ksh) is tested and works.

Cheers
ZB

Hi,

I think you can test this :

for i in `ls -al /YOUR_PATH | awk '{print $9}' |grep .lst`
do
u=`ls $i| sed 's/.lst/.dat/g'`
mv $i $u
done


if you want to change all the .lst file it will be right.

Alex'