UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I've got a bunch of files called oldabc, olddef etc.

i want to copy these to be abc, def....

I can do this with file extensions....but can get the logic to work for prefixes. All the files I am interested in have a prefix of 'old'.

This loop is no good for me....it looks at the content of the files...rather than changing the filename.

for files in `ls *fmt`;
do
newfilename="cut -c4-50 $files";
cp $files $newfilename;
done

How do I get it to look at the filename and change it - rather than the content of the file?

>for files in `ls *fmt`;
>do
newfilename="cut -c4-50 $files>";
>cp $files $newfilename;
>done

Code:

for files in `ls *fmt`
do
newfilename=`echo $files | cut -c4-`
cp $files $newfilename
done

ahhhh - echo...of course...great thanks.