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[SOLVED] Rename multiple files

 
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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers [SOLVED] Rename multiple files
# 1  
Old 12-04-2012
[SOLVED] Rename multiple files
Hi. I have a large number of files with names like:

t_ 0.20000E-02.dat

There is actually a space after the underscore. These files are numbered numerically, i.e. t_ 0.20000E-02.dat, t_ 0.21000E-02.dat, t_ 0.22000E-02.dat and so on.

What I would like to do is rename such that the file with the lowest numerical value becomes t1.dat, and the one next to it becomes t2.dat and so on.

I think what I have to do is find the number of files in the directory and sort them according to their numerical value. Then I have to do a loop over them to rename them accordingly. But this seems to be quite involved to me. Any ideas?

Thanks!
# 2  
Old 12-04-2012
Code:
$ ls -1 | sort -k 1.4 | while read a; do i=$((i+1));echo mv "$a" t${i}.dat; done
mv t_ 0.20000E-02.dat t1.dat
mv t_ 0.21000E-02.dat t2.dat
mv t_ 0.22000E-02.dat t3.dat

if you are happy with the move command, then remove the echo and run it
This User Gave Thanks to itkamaraj For This Post:
lost.identity
# 3  
Old 12-04-2012
Thanks for the reply. The problem I have is I also have files such as t_ 0.10000E-03.dat, t_ 0.20000E-03.dat etc, which are not sorted properly, so I get the following:

Code:
mv t_  0.0000    .dat t1.dat
mv t_ 0.10000E-02.dat t2.dat
mv t_ 0.10000E-03.dat t3.dat
mv t_ 0.11000E-02.dat t4.dat
mv t_ 0.12000E-02.dat t5.dat

# 4  
Old 12-04-2012
try this: This will remove all the spaces and replace it with an underscore and then rename them

Code:
ls -1 "t_ "* | while read filename ; do flnm=`echo "$filename"  | tr -s " " "_"`; cp "$filename" $flnm; done

use cp command just in case.
now run this code to rename them t1,t2 etc

Code:
i=0;for file in `ls -1 t_*`; do i=$((i+1)); mv "$filen" t${i}.dat; done

Please run it with echo statements, to see if that is what you want.
You can club the loops together once you are sure what each thing is doing.
Last edited by grep_me; 12-04-2012 at 05:48 PM.. Reason: Removed Echo statements
This User Gave Thanks to grep_me For This Post:
lost.identity
# 5  
Old 12-04-2012
That is a useless use of ls * and useless use of backticks. You do not need ls to use *, that's the shell's job. You're only getting the list of files out of ls when you use * because you're cramming the list of files into ls in the first place.

Furthermore, you don't need to cram everything on one line. ; can be replaced by a new line for better readability in nearly all cases.

Code:
i=1

for FILE in "t_ "*
do
        echo mv "$FILE" t${i}.dat
        let i=i+1
done

Remove the echo once you've tested and are sure it does what you want.
This User Gave Thanks to Corona688 For This Post:
lost.identity
# 6  
Old 12-05-2012
Hi, I'm afraid the codes are still doing this:

Code:
mv t_0.0000_.dat t1.dat
mv t_0.10000E-02.dat t2.dat
mv t_0.10000E-03.dat t3.dat

Whereas, I was hoping it would sort them according to their numerical ascending order then rename them as:

Code:
mv t_0.0000_.dat t1.dat
mv t_0.10000E-03.dat t2.dat
mv t_0.20000E-03.dat t3.dat

Perhaps it may help that I know the change in the numerical value between the files is 0.1E-3, i.e. it is i=i+0.1E-3

But thanks for the code that removes the space character!
# 7  
Old 12-05-2012
Well, the way they're sorted, they don't really sort numerically. No sort command I can think of is going to grok floating point numbers in exponential notation.

So the usual trick is to rename them into something that will sort.

Are there any positive exponents or only negative ones? Any negative numbers or only positive ones? What do they look like?
Last edited by Corona688; 12-05-2012 at 11:33 AM..
 
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