script-help

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

Hi gurus,

I need to write a script which convert the lowercase letter in a filename to uppercase letters. For example I have a file called bts.a303 and I want to rename it to BTS.A303. I have to do that for 20 files at once in a directory. The problem is I know there is a function called toupper but I don't know how to use it in a shell script.
Regards,
ionut .

[Pete Randall]

From man tr:

tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" file2


Pete

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

See the man pages for 'tr'. You can do this:

# tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]" < infile > outfile

Regards!

...JRF...

[Steve Steel · Accepted solution]

Hi

You need the shell typeset option

set -x
file=bts.a303
typeset -u fileu=$file
echo mv $file $fileu


output

+ file=bts.a303
+ typeset -u fileu=bts.a303
+ echo mv bts.a303 BTS.A303
mv bts.a303 BTS.A303

Steve Steel

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi:

BTW, the 'toupper' function you are thinking of belongs to 'awk'. You could use it thusly to translate your lowercase to uppercase:

# echo "bts.a303"|awk '{print toupper($0)'}

Using 'tr':

# echo "bts.a303"|tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]"

Regards!

...JRF...

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi,

Or you could use perl:

perl -e '{foreach $f (<*>){rename($f,uc $f)}}'

rgds, Robin

[john korterman]

Hi ionut,
a simple script solution:


#!/usr/bin/sh

# Dir. in which the files are
FILEDIR=
cd $FILEDIR

# list of the filenames to change
FILENAMES="bts.a303 file2"
for i in $FILENAMES
do
UPPER=$(echo $i|tr "[:lower:]" "[:upper:]")
echo "mv $i $UPPER"
#mv $i $UPPER
done

where you need to set FILEDIR to the dir., in which the files are.
FILENAMES should be a list of the file names you want to rename. If it looks sensible, then uncomment the #mv line.

regards,
John K.

[harry d brown jr]

How's this:

# ll
total 0
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 Hkwla.888
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 JEKSI.888
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 hywue.888
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 jsjs.888
# ls -1 | awk '{system("mv " $1 " " toupper($1));}'
mv: JEKSI.888 and JEKSI.888 are identical
# ll
total 0
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 HKWLA.888
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 HYWUE.888
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 JEKSI.888
-rw-rw-rw- 1 root sys 0 Mar 10 08:26 JSJS.888
#


If you are willing to ignore the fact that one file was already in upper case, then the above will work.

live free or die
harry

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

Thank you all!
case closed.

Harry: you took my breath away...
btw: it's working with $9, not $1, $1 are the permissions in ls -l output.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Same, but different :)

a5:/tmp/tmp 112 > ll
total 8
581 drwxrwxrwx 2 merijn softwr 96 Mar 10 14:44 .
2 drwxrwxrwx 7 root root 4096 Mar 10 14:44 ..
575 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 Gff7.org
574 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 aGy.7
573 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 aaB
103 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 aaa
a5:/tmp/tmp 113 > perl -MFile::Copy -e'move$_,uc for<*>'
a5:/tmp/tmp 114 > ll
total 8
581 drwxrwxrwx 2 merijn softwr 96 Mar 10 14:44 .
2 drwxrwxrwx 7 root root 4096 Mar 10 14:44 ..
103 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 AAA
573 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 AAB
574 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 AGY.7
575 -rw-rw-rw- 1 merijn softwr 5 Mar 10 14:44 GFF7.ORG
a5:/tmp/tmp 115 >

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn

[Pete Randall]

That's because that's a numeral one (ls -1) not the letter l (ls -l).

Pete

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi,

The ls command doesn't actually need the "-1" switch if stdout is a pipe:

ls | awk '{print $1}'

is identical to:

ls -1 | awk '{print $1}'

rgds, Robin

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again):

If you are going to leverage 'ls' and move your files, I'd consider filtering and processing *only* files:

# cd
# ls -l |awk '/^-/ {system("mv " $9 " "toupper($9))}'

Regards!

...JRF...

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

procura: I have to learn Perl first. Using your perl line is something like sorcery for me - it works maybe, but I'm not understanding how it does what it does...btw: I think I need a perl module or something like this, cause I have an error: unrecognized switch: MFile...

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Ahh :) I guessed that much anyway. I'm regularly using `new' perl functionality in this group to tease the readers, and show how effective perl scripting can be. Anyway, explaining all a bit for you

-M means 'use a mudule'
if that fails, you're probably using perl4.x, which is quite old. I'm using 5.8.0 plus some extra patches.
You can check your version with 'perl -v' (short) or 'perl -V' (long), which should IMHO show at least 5.6.1 to be useful for /my/ examples
Check the location of your perl binary with 'which perl'. perl4 is located in /usr/contrib/bin. If perl5 is installed on your system, it can be found in either /opt/perl5 or /usr/local (the executable for both in bin/perl). If it is not, it is freely available from several sources (https://www.beepz.com/personal/merijn/ or http://www.cmve.net/~merijn/ or http://hpux.connect.org.uk/hppd/hpux/Languages/perl-5.8.0/ to name a few)


Now for the script:

perl -MFile::Copy -e'move$_,uc for<*>'

-MFile::Copy uses the File::Copy module that is included in the CORE distribution of Perl, and offers OS-independant copy/move commands

-e passes an expression to perl. The expression here is 'move$_,uc for<*>', which only parses OK in newer perls where the 'for' loop is allowed as a statement modifier, allowing to leave out the parenteses. Rewritten in C-like structure, that would read as

for (glob ("*")) {
move ($_, uc $_);
}

<*> is a shorthand for a list of all files, which is effectively fetched with perl's 'glob' function. Most base functions in perl have optional arguments that default to the global variable $_. 'uc' is the "uppercase" function. Parenteses are aften optional too, and spaces also, as long as leaving them out does not confuses the parser.

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

OK, procura, I have perl 4.0 on the 712 workstation I use for test purposes. I shall install the latest perl you've recommended. Thank you for the explanations! :-))

[Ionut Grigorescu_2]

Procura: it works wonderful! It remains only to learn perl ;-) indeed, there is more than one way...