Renaming multiple files within a script / batch file

[Simon R Wootton]

Hi Folks,
I'm running HP-UX 11i v1.
I am trying to rename multiple files within a directory.
The files are of the form :

'STRyymmdd.' and need to be renamed to 'STRyymmdd.csv'

e.g.
STR080806.
STR080807.

need to become
STR080806.csv
STR080807.csv

is there an easy way to do this?

Any help greatfully received and rewarded!

Thanks

Simon

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

A simple for loop would do:

for FILE in STR*
do
mv $FILE $FILE.csv
done


Pete

[Simon R Wootton]

Sorted - thanks Pete

[Eric Raeburn]

A tip from the paranoid. It is very easy to make a mistake with these types of commands, with possibly disastrous results. Whenever I do this type of thing, I first echo it to the display. So for example, in the proposed solution, I would do

echo mv ${FILE} ${FILE}.csv

If the output is correct, recall the command from the history buffer and remove "echo". If the output is too long, you can always pipe it through 'head'.

Note also the curly braces. I prefer to play it safe if one of the adjacent characters is non-alphanumneric.

-Eric

[Dennis Handly]

>Eric: I prefer to play it safe if one of the adjacent characters is non-alphanumeric.

Except for "_", those are the cases where it is safe to leave out the {}. :-)