I am looking for an automated way to rename files.  I shoot two hundred or
so pictures at my son's basketball games.  After editing and deleting I am
looking for a program that will rename a large number of files.

thanks

Paul


----== Posted via webservertalk.com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet New
s==----
http://www.webservertalk.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! >100,000
 Newsgroups
---= East/West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

paul <paulbon@polarcomm.com> writes:
>I am looking for an automated way to rename files.  I shoot two hundred or
>so pictures at my son's basketball games.  After editing and deleting I am
>looking for a program that will rename a large number of files.
>
>thanks
>
>Paul
>

A pretty general request.  What criteria do you wish to apply to the
original name to determine the new name?

If the criteria are general (i.e. replace prefix A with prefix B), you
can do that with a pretty simple shell script.

For example:   Your original names are of the form P0812xxxx.JPG where
xxxx is an ascending integer sequence monotonically increasing from zero;
this script will replace the "P0812" part with "yosemite_aug12_" where
P08120001.JPG will become yosemite_aug12_0001.JPG.

#!/bin/ksh
#

prefix=${1:-P}
newprefix=${2:-P}
suffix=${3:-.JPG}

for file in ${prefix}*${suffix}
do
mv ${file} ${newprefix}${file##${prefix}}
done


====

chmod +x your script then:

scriptname p101 aug_01_ .jpg

will rename all files starting with p101 and ending with .jpg in the
current working directory to begin with aug_01_.

(e.g. p1010001.jpg becomes aug_01_0001.jpg)

(if you don't have the korn shell installed, change the first
line of the script to #!/bin/bash).

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

paul wrote:

> I am looking for an automated way to rename files.  I shoot two hundred or
> so pictures at my son's basketball games.  After editing and deleting I am
> looking for a program that will rename a large number of files.

You don't say how you want to rename them, and you don't say what kind of
files they are. Here is the basic idea:

#!/bin/sh

# enter the correct suffix below

suffix=jpg

n=0
for fn in *
do
mv $fn $n.$suffix
((n++))
done

--
Paul Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]