renaming a file....

[bruce]

i can rename a file in the current dir

is there a way to be in a parent dir, and rename a file in a child dir?

i can use the find cmd, and generate the files i want to rename. however, my
attempts at using the find . -name "foo" | xargs rename... doesn't seem to
work, as the rename is coming back saying that the file doesn't exist..

it seems that the rename is operating on files in the current dir, as
opposed to the files from the 'find'....

thanks

[Jacques B.]

On 12/28/06, bruce  wrote:
> i can rename a file in the current dir
>
> is there a way to be in a parent dir, and rename a file in a child dir?
>
> i can use the find cmd, and generate the files i want to rename. however, my
> attempts at using the find . -name "foo" | xargs rename... doesn't seem to
> work, as the rename is coming back saying that the file doesn't exist..
>
> it seems that the rename is operating on files in the current dir, as
> opposed to the files from the 'find'....
>
> thanks
>
> --
> fedora-list mailing list
> [e-mail]
> To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list

I haven't used xarg.  I use -exec with the find command.

find . -name "foo" -exec rename {} ... ;

Not sure if that will help you or not.

Not to detract from your question, but once answered I'd be interested
in some input on the difference in using xarg vs -exec.

Thanks,

Jacques B.

[Remi Collet]

Jacques B. a écrit :
> Not to detract from your question, but once answered I'd be interested
> in some input on the difference in using xarg vs -exec.

Using xarg seems subject to command line size limit.
find -exec run the command once for each file.

Remi.

[Cameron Simpson]

On 28Dec2006 11:32, bruce  wrote:
| i can rename a file in the current dir
| 
| is there a way to be in a parent dir, and rename a file in a child dir?
| 
| i can use the find cmd, and generate the files i want to rename. however, my
| attempts at using the find . -name "foo" | xargs rename... doesn't seem to
| work, as the rename is coming back saying that the file doesn't exist..
| 
| it seems that the rename is operating on files in the current dir, as
| opposed to the files from the 'find'....

Generate "mv" commands from the output of find, and pipe to "sh".
Without knowing exactly what renaming you're doing it's hard to be much
more help.

[Todd Zullinger]

Remi Collet wrote:
> Jacques B. a écrit :
> > Not to detract from your question, but once answered I'd be
> > interested in some input on the difference in using xarg vs -exec.
>
> Using xarg seems subject to command line size limit.

Using xargs will help you avoid the problem of hitting the command
line size limit.
> find -exec run the command once for each file.

Which is very inefficient when you're doing something that could be
done on all the files at once.  Generally I think using xargs is more
appropriate.

[Todd Zullinger]

bruce wrote:
> i can rename a file in the current dir
>
> is there a way to be in a parent dir, and rename a file in a child
> dir?
>
> i can use the find cmd, and generate the files i want to rename.
> however, my attempts at using the find . -name "foo" | xargs
> rename... doesn't seem to work, as the rename is coming back saying
> that the file doesn't exist..
>
> it seems that the rename is operating on files in the current dir,
> as opposed to the files from the 'find'....

Can you post the command and the output?

This works here:

$ mkdir dir; touch dir/abcCat.{txt,py}
$ ls dir/
abcCat.py  abcCat.txt
$ find dir/ -name 'abcCat.*' | xargs rename . _dog.
$ ls dir/
abcCat_dog.py  abcCat_dog.txt

[Tom Browder]

On 12/28/06, Cameron Simpson  wrote:
> On 28Dec2006 11:32, bruce  wrote:

...
> | i can use the find cmd, and generate the files i want to rename. however, my
> | attempts at using the find . -name "foo" | xargs rename... doesn't seem to

You can try

find . -name "foo" -exec mv -i {} newfoo ;

That will rename all the files named foo in the subdirectory structure
(after getting you to confirm the rename), but that won't show the
full path.  In addition, if you have files with the same name in
different subdirectories you may not want to rename all of them.
Another consideration is if you are looking at files with similar
names.

What I like to do before any use of find to change a file is to know
what find "finds."

In the example above I will execute

find . -name foo

and see what files are found.  The list returned will include the
relative path, so I will see something like:

./subdir1/foo
  ./foo

Then I can do a couple of things.  I can gang rename:

find . -name foo -exec mv {} foo2 ;

or, one at a time

mv ./foo ./foo2
  mv ./subdir1/foo ./subdir/foo3

-Tom

Tom Browder
Niceville, Florida
USA