[kwlug-disc] bash - file renaming

[Ronald Barnes]

Hi everyone,

As you probably already know, Gnu/Linux distributions do not come with a 
rename utility similar to what some of us "grew up on" in DOS and/or OS/2.

The "mv" (move) command is to be used instead. But it doesn't handle 
things like "mv *.htm *.html".

So, I decided to tackle writing one.


Since bash has "Pathname Expansion", which expands a parameter like 
"*.htm" into a list of files that match that expression, it was a bit 
more challenging than I expected.


However, I think I have something that handles wildcards sufficiently well.

> https://github.com/RonaldBarnes/bash-rename


If anyone is interested in having a look, and providing feedback, it 
would be welcome.


There is a "rename.sh" which does the parameter parsing (although once 
it parses the parameters, "mv" does the actual work), and a 
"rename.unit-tests.sh" which is - so far - just notes to myself on edge 
cases.



I'm pretty sure this utility can be of some use to a significant number 
of people and hopefully someone on this list will agree.


Note, there's a "no-op" aka "dry-run" option of -n that will prevent any 
files from being touched / moved / renamed, and a -vvv option to spew 
out debugging info to help determine how the script derives the target 
file name from the wildcards provided.



Thanks!

rb