[Watford] Bulk Rename Files

[Dimitrios Siganos]

Hi Rob,

You are mixing/confusing glob patterns and regular expressions.

A question mark (?) represents a mandatory single character in a glob
pattern.

A question mark in a regular expression means something entirely
different. In a regular expression a mandatory single character is
represented by a dot (.). The utility 'rename' expects regular expressions.

This is probably want you want:
ls -1 *.gsm | rename -v "s/^OUT...-........-......-//g"

Regards,
Dimitris

On 05/12/12 09:09, Rob Jefferis wrote:
> Actually, i lie. I was running find -iname '*'  -exec rename -v
> "s/^OUT???-????????-??????-//g" *.gsm '{}' \;
> 
> stripping the *.gsm as in your suggestion does indeed get rid of the too
> many arguments, but also doesn't seem to rename the files. I will
> continue testing.
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Rob
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
> [watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] on behalf of Rob Jefferis
> [rob at letchmore.co.uk]
> *Sent:* 05 December 2012 08:58
> *To:* watford at mailman.lug.org.uk
> *Subject:* Re: [Watford] Bulk Rename Files
> 
> Thanks Steve, that is pretty much what I have been trying but for some
> reason I still get the error argument list too long. hmmmmm
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Rob
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
> [watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk] on behalf of Steve Horsley
> [steve.horsley at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* 05 December 2012 08:46
> *To:* watford at mailman.lug.org.uk
> *Subject:* Re: [Watford] Bulk Rename Files
> 
> Something like this might work:
> find -iname 'out*'  -exec rename -v "s/^OUT???-????????-??????-//g" '{}' \;
> 
> Perehaps a bit slow, but since you've been trying for quite some time, I
> guess that won't matter too much.
> 
> Steve
> 
> On 5 December 2012 08:36, Rob Jefferis <rob at letchmore.co.uk
> <mailto:rob at letchmore.co.uk>> wrote:
> 
>     Morning all, apologies for the delay in getting back on this.
> 
>     Thanks very much for the replies.
> 
>     I managed to find a line that worked to rename the files as I wanted
>     which is, rename -v "s/^OUT???-????????-??????-//g" *.gsm
> 
>     The problem i have now is that running that on the actual folder
>     gives me an Argument list too long error.
> 
>     When i copy files between these folders i use the line  find -iname
>     * -exec cp -v {} /temp/. \; so that i am essentially copying one
>     file at a time.
> 
>     I have been trying to combine my 2 examples to complete my bulk
>     rename but so far without much success. Any help would be appreciated.
> 
>     Thanks again
> 
>     Rob
> 
> 
> 
>     ________________________________________
>     From: watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
>     <mailto:watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>     [watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk
>     <mailto:watford-bounces at mailman.lug.org.uk>] on behalf of Alain
>     Williams [addw at phcomp.co.uk <mailto:addw at phcomp.co.uk>]
>     Sent: 28 November 2012 00:44
>     To: watford at mailman.lug.org.uk <mailto:watford at mailman.lug.org.uk>
>     Subject: Re: [Watford] Bulk Rename Files
> 
> 
>     On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 11:43:05PM +0000, Rob Jefferis wrote:
>     > Hi guys, I have a load of files in a directory with file names
>     similar to below
>     >
>     > OUT119-20120702-084956-1341215396.177198.gsm
>     >
>     > It is basically OUT(dialingextensionnumber)-DATE-TIME-UNIQUEID.gsm
>     >
>     > I would like to somehow bulk rename all the files in this folder
>     to strip everything other than the uniqueid.gsm bit
>     >
>     > So in this case I want the file to end up called
>     >
>     > 1341215396.177198.gsm
>     >
>     >
>     > Is there a quick way to do this?
> 
>     Using ksh
> 
>     for file in *.gsm
>     do mv $file ${file#~(E:+(OUT+(\d)-+(\d)-+(\d)-))}
>     done
> 
>     The syntax is a little strange.
> 
>     --
>     Alain Williams
>     Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking,
>     Programmer, IT Lecturer.
>     +44 (0) 787 668 0256 <tel:%2B44%20%280%29%20787%20668%200256>
>     http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
>     Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information:
>     http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
>     #include <std_disclaimer.h>
> 
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