topic Re: convert filenames in Operating System - Linux

convert filenames

Christian Marquardt_1 — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:08:16 GMT

hello@all,
I have some files with date in filename. Now I#ve to convert the date format in the filename from DD.MM.YYYY to YYYYMMDD.
Sample:
original filename is: BA_D07.12.2006.txt
after converting it should be: BA_D20061207.txt

Can anyone help me? I've no idea how to do.

kind regards
Christian

Re: convert filenames

Peter Godron — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:23:04 GMT

Re: convert filenames

Dennis Handly — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:24:03 GMT

What you need to do is use sed in a for-loop:
for file in BA_D??.??.????.txt; do
echo mv $file $(echo $file | \
sed -e 's/BA_D$..$\.$..$\.$....$/BA_D\3\2\1/')
done

Remove the "echo" above when you are sure that the mv commands are proper.

The for-loop uses shell pattern matching regexp(5). sed uses basic regular expressions regexp(5).

$ and $ bracket chunks that can be referenced by \#, their position. And I need to quote the "." since they are special.

Re: convert filenames

Christian Marquardt_1 — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:55:22 GMT

Dennis' way works fine.
It's a very strange script but it works fine ;-)

Thanks a lot!!!!

kind regards
Christian

Re: convert filenames

Christian Marquardt_1 — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 06:59:00 GMT

it works