I have a bunch of files that I need to add a common pharse at the beginning of each file name. What command should I use to run this for a bunch of files?
e.g.
67898.txt subject_67898.txt (I want to add subject to every file name)
Here is a classic perl script (with some examples to get you started) that I use for renaming files.
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#!/usr/bin/perl -w # rename - rename files with a Perl expression # # This is a very short and simple but powerful script for renaming files. # The script iterates through the @ARGV array and uses Perl's built-in # rename function rename one file at a time according to a Perl statement # that is entered by the user at the time the program is executed. # The script uses eval to compile and execute a user-supplied string used # to control renaming of the files. # ######################################################################### # # Example 1 # # rename 's/\.orig$//' *.orig # # Example 1 uses a substitute operator to change $_ and eliminate the # string '.orig' appearing at the end of each file name. # #------------------------------------------------------------------------ # # Example 2 # # rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/ unless /^Make/' * # # Example 2 uses Perl's y operator to change all uppercase characters to # lowercase characters in $_, with the trailing condition that this only # be done if the file name starts with 'Make'. # #------------------------------------------------------------------------ # # Example 3 # # rename '$_ .= ".bad"' *.f # # Example 3 concatenates a '.bad' extention onto each file name. # #------------------------------------------------------------------------ # # Example 4 # # rename 'print "$_: "; s /foo/bar/ if =~ /^y/i' * # # Example 4 prompts the user with each file name abd reads the user response # from the standard input. If the user's response starts with 'y' or 'Y', # then a substitute operator changes 'foo' to 'bar' in the file name. # #------------------------------------------------------------------------ # # Example 5 # # find /tmp -name '*~' -print | rename 's|^(.*)/(.+)~$|$1/.#$2|' # # Example 5 demonstrates that the rename script can also receive its list # of file names from via the standard input instead of through command line # arguments. The find command is used to search for files under the /tmp # directory whose names end with a '~'. These are backup files created by # the emacs editor. The find command prints the pathnames to all such files # and pipes this list of pathnames to the rename script. The rename script # uses a substitute operator to capture everything in the file name leading # up to the final '~' and renames the file with a '.#' prefix and no '~' at # the end. For example a file called /tmp/d/myfile~ is renamed to # /tmp/d/.#myfile # #------------------------------------------------------------------------ #
# use shift to extract the first command line argument - this is the string # containing the Perl statement(s) to be compiled and executed. # These Perl operations are stored in a $op variable.
($op = shift) || die "Usage: rename expr [files]\n";
chomp(@ARGV = ) unless @ARGV;
foreach (@ARGV) { # save the current file name in $was $was = $_; # $_ is the default loop variable eval $op; # compile and execute the Perl # operations submitted by the user die if $@; # means eval 'failed' rename($was, $_) unless $was eq $_; # rename is a Perl built-in function }
