UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I have a large number of subdirectories (>200), and in each of these directories there is a file with a name like "opp1234.dat".

I'd like to know how I could change the names of these files to say "out.dat" in all these subdirectories in one go.

Thanks!

Try

Code:

#!/bin/ksh
for foundfile in `find $dir -name "opp[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].dat" -print`
do
   filedir="${file%/*}"
   echo mv $foundfile $filedir/out.dat
done

This will only display, so you can have a play to vary it. Just remove the echo word to execute for real when you are happy. The code looks for all files under $dir so you can choose what to substitute for that. It only picks up files which are the letters opp followed by four digits, followed by .dat, so if this doesn't quite match what you need, you will need to tweak that too.



I hope that this helps,
Robin
Liverpool/Blackburn
UK

Thanks! But I still have an issue, it can find the files but the $filedir seems to be empty (i.e. doesn't give anything when I echo $filedir).

Shouldn't that be foundfile (not file ) ?

Yes! works now. Thanks!

Thanks methyl, my mistake.