UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

requirement:

There are many files inside a directory and all are named like this "out_1".

The file names goes on itearation like out_2, out_3 etc....

Now i want to rename all the file names based on the text inside the file.

the text in all the files follow a pattern like it satrts with "table.shipment"

The text 'shipment' must be captured and the file has to be renamed with 'shipment' .


can anyone help me out????


thanks in advance,
Arun Manas

Code:

$> ls -la
total 16
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096  9. Feb 08:16 .
drwxr-x--- 4 root root 4096  9. Feb 08:16 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   15  9. Feb 08:16 f1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   16  9. Feb 08:16 f2
$> head *
==> f1 <==
table.shipment

==> f2 <==
table.transport
$> for f in *; do mv $f $(head -1 $f| cut -d"." -f2); done
$> ls -1
shipment
transport

Hi Zaxxon,

Thanks for your valuable reply.

The syntax we get an error and the error message is

Code:

Try `mv --help' for more information.
mv: when moving multiple files, last argument must be a directory
Try `mv --help' for more information.

can you please let us know what is the -f2 in the code doing after cut -d"."

Code:

for f in *; do mv $f $(head -1 $f| cut -d"." -f2); done

Thanks in advance,
arunmanas

Moderator's Comments:

Please use [code] and [/code] tags when posting code, data or logs etc. to preserve formatting and enhance readability, thanks.

A quick man cut would have explained you that too. It means to cut field 2 while using a dot as delimeter.

Seems list of values in the for loop is empty or not correct. Go into the directory where the files are and do a

Code:

for f in *; do echo $f; done

This should list all directory entries in there but those starting with a dot. If you have those "out_*" files mixed in there with others, you might want to refine that and filter it with something like

Code:

for f in out_*; do echo $f; done

hi Zaxxon,

that really worked very well.

But now a new issue like in my file i have the text like this

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION "OWNER"."TABLE_SHIPMENT" RETURN VARCHAR2 IS

but when i use the query that you have provided if the text after tehd elimiter dot has space in between the below error will occur.

mv: when moving multiple files, last argument must be a directory
Try `mv --help' for more information.

the code should be modified such that it doesnt care about the space and picks only the word TABLE_SHIPMENT from the text.

we cant take by position also because each words before the text varies.

Kindly help me out.

thanks for ur valuable replies and for the future solution too

Arunmanas