2

Say I have a range of files named: "blah-10-blah", "blah-11-blah" etc...up to "blah-30-blah".

I would like to change the names to "blah-20-blah", "blah-21-blah" etc...up to "blah-40-blah".

Is there a way of doing this in the terminal?

2
  • 1
    There's always a way. Can you give an example of actual file name ? Are they all always consisting of text , number, text pattern ? are there always a field with text , then number, then text ? Oct 31, 2015 at 19:25
  • Orm: If the answer below helped you, don't forget to click the grey at the left of its text, which means Yes, this answer is valid! ;-)
    – Fabby
    Nov 3, 2015 at 10:58

3 Answers 3

2

You can do:

#!/bin/bash
files=( blah-??-blah )
for ((i=${#files[@]}-1; i>=0; i--)); do

    first="${files[$i]%%-*}" 
    num="$(grep -o '[0-9]\+' <<<"${files[$i]}")" 
    last="${files##*-}"

        echo mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last" 
done

If you are satisfied with everything, add | bash at the end to let the mv operation take place.

  • We have put the relevant file names into an array files

  • Then we have iterated over the elements of the array from the end i.e. from last to first

  • first will have the first part of file name i.e. part prior to the first -

  • last will have the last part of the file name i.e. the part after last -

  • num will have the number in between two -

  • mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last" will do the rename operation accordingly

Example:

$ ls -1
blah-10-blah
blah-11-blah
blah-12-blah
blah-13-blah
blah-14-blah
blah-15-blah
blah-16-blah
blah-17-blah
blah-18-blah
blah-19-blah
blah-20-blah
blah-21-blah
blah-22-blah
blah-23-blah
blah-24-blah
blah-25-blah
blah-26-blah
blah-27-blah
blah-28-blah
blah-29-blah
blah-30-blah
blah-foo-1
blah-foo-2

$ for ((i=${#files[@]}-1; i>=0; i--)); do first="${files[$i]%%-*}" \
    num="$(grep -o '[0-9]\+' <<<"${files[$i]}")" last="${files##*-}"; \ 
      echo mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last"; done

mv blah-30-blah blah-40-blah
mv blah-29-blah blah-39-blah
mv blah-28-blah blah-38-blah
mv blah-27-blah blah-37-blah
mv blah-26-blah blah-36-blah
mv blah-25-blah blah-35-blah
mv blah-24-blah blah-34-blah
mv blah-23-blah blah-33-blah
mv blah-22-blah blah-32-blah
mv blah-21-blah blah-31-blah
mv blah-20-blah blah-30-blah
mv blah-19-blah blah-29-blah
mv blah-18-blah blah-28-blah
mv blah-17-blah blah-27-blah
mv blah-16-blah blah-26-blah
mv blah-15-blah blah-25-blah
mv blah-14-blah blah-24-blah
mv blah-13-blah blah-23-blah
mv blah-12-blah blah-22-blah
mv blah-11-blah blah-21-blah
mv blah-10-blah blah-20-blah

$ for ((i=${#files[@]}-1; i>=0; i--)); do first="${files[$i]%%-*}" \
    num="$(grep -o '[0-9]\+' <<<"${files[$i]}")" last="${files##*-}";\ 
      echo mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last"; done | bash

$ ls -1
blah-20-blah
blah-21-blah
blah-22-blah
blah-23-blah
blah-24-blah
blah-25-blah
blah-26-blah
blah-27-blah
blah-28-blah
blah-29-blah
blah-30-blah
blah-31-blah
blah-32-blah
blah-33-blah
blah-34-blah
blah-35-blah
blah-36-blah
blah-37-blah
blah-38-blah
blah-39-blah
blah-40-blah
blah-foo-1
blah-foo-2
1
  • Great, thanks! Trying, as a noog, to get my head around this.
    – Orm
    Nov 1, 2015 at 14:07
2

It's important to process the files in an inverse numerical order, otherwise the task will fail due to already existing files with the target filename:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name 'blah-??-blah' -print0 | sort -zr | xargs -0 rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e'
  • find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name 'blah-??-blah' -print0: prints a NULL-separated list of the files in the current working directory matching the globbing pattern blah-??-blah;
  • sort -zr: sorts the list in an inverse numerical order;
  • xargs -0 rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e': renames the files substituting the first couple of digits after a dash with the correspondent value incremented by 10;
% tree
.
├── blah-10-blah
├── blah-11-blah
├── blah-12-blah
├── blah-13-blah
├── blah-14-blah
├── blah-15-blah
├── blah-16-blah
├── blah-17-blah
├── blah-18-blah
├── blah-19-blah
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
└── blah-30-blah

0 directories, 21 files
% find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name 'blah-??-blah' -print0 | sort -zr | xargs -0 rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e'
% tree
.
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
├── blah-30-blah
├── blah-31-blah
├── blah-32-blah
├── blah-33-blah
├── blah-34-blah
├── blah-35-blah
├── blah-36-blah
├── blah-37-blah
├── blah-38-blah
├── blah-39-blah
└── blah-40-blah

0 directories, 21 files

If using Zsh, the task can be heavily simplified, as Zsh allows to expand filenames in an inverse numerical order:

rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e' blah-??-blah(On)
% tree
.
├── blah-10-blah
├── blah-11-blah
├── blah-12-blah
├── blah-13-blah
├── blah-14-blah
├── blah-15-blah
├── blah-16-blah
├── blah-17-blah
├── blah-18-blah
├── blah-19-blah
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
└── blah-30-blah

0 directories, 21 files
% rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e' blah-??-blah(On)
% tree                                
.
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
├── blah-30-blah
├── blah-31-blah
├── blah-32-blah
├── blah-33-blah
├── blah-34-blah
├── blah-35-blah
├── blah-36-blah
├── blah-37-blah
├── blah-38-blah
├── blah-39-blah
└── blah-40-blah

0 directories, 21 files
10
  • 1
    I think you are referring to this one: askubuntu.com/a/674732/72216 which you deleted :) (I also remembered). Oct 31, 2015 at 21:40
  • 1
    @JacobVlijm Indeed, that's why I couldn't find it! And I have no idea about how you could find it either :). However as always with these questions, I'm not sure if voting to close or not. They're so similar but this answer won't work for the other question, and the answer in the other question won't work for this question.
    – kos
    Oct 31, 2015 at 21:48
  • I usually switch to Google in these cases, I knew it was something with "add" and "number". "add number to name askubuntu" did the job (second hit) :) Although the category is well represented, the exact question seems no dupe. Oct 31, 2015 at 21:53
  • 1
    @JacobVlijm Right :). Yes, closing as duplicate would be wrong. Ok, let's just let this other almost-duplicate question survive.
    – kos
    Oct 31, 2015 at 21:59
  • Excellent idea kos..i also had similar idea..gonna put something similar..
    – heemayl
    Nov 1, 2015 at 3:08
0

Basic idea of this approach is to throw all the files into temporary "basket" directory, and then pick them out one by one, create new name , and move back with new name into the original directory.

The script bellow takes a single argument ( $1 ), which is directory where the files you want to rename are located.

Demo

xieerqi:$ ls testdir                                                                                         
blah-10-blah  blah-20-blah  blah-30-blah  blah-40-blah

xieerqi:$ cat testdir/*                                                                                      
I am file 10 
I am file 20 
I am file 30 
I am file 40 

xieerqi:$ ./incrementNames.sh testdir                                                                        
blah-10-blah ../blah-20-blah
blah-20-blah ../blah-30-blah
blah-30-blah ../blah-40-blah
blah-40-blah ../blah-50-blah

xieerqi:$ ls testdir
blah-20-blah  blah-30-blah  blah-40-blah  blah-50-blah  TMP/

xieerqi:$ cat testdir/blah                                                                                   
blah-20-blah blah-30-blah blah-40-blah blah-50-blah 
xieerqi:$ cat testdir/blah-20-blah                                                                           
I am file 10 

xieerqi:$ cat testdir/blah-30-blah                                                                           
I am file 20 

Script

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: incrementNames.sh /path/to/dir" && exit
fi

# navigate to target directory
# create temporary directory
cd "$1"
mkdir TMP
# move everything to TMP directory
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -iname "*-*" -exec mv -t TMP {} \+
# drop down to TMP directory pick filesback into the directory , and rename them as we go
cd TMP
find .  -maxdepth 1 -type f -iname "*-*" -printf "%f\n"  | sort  | while IFS= read FILENAME
do
        NEW="$( awk -F '-'  '{print $1FS$2+10FS$3 }' <<< "$FILENAME")"
        echo "$FILENAME" "../$NEW" 
        mv "$FILENAME" ../"$NEW"
done

Limitation

This script is specifically for files following pattern text-number-text, or at least text-number patter. It wont work for others

1
  • 3
    This seems ok for few small files, but if there are hundreds of files or the overall size is in the GB range, it may take large amounts of time because the files will be copied twice (only temporarily, so no additional disk space is used afterwards, but it takes time)
    – Byte Commander
    Oct 31, 2015 at 23:11

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