| Art Alexion on 22 Feb 2006 16:42:49 -0000 |
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Dan Crosta wrote: > Art Alexion wrote: > >> I am trying to iron out a script that renames all files in a current >> directory to replace embedded spaces with underscores, and makes >> everything lower case. >> >> The suggestion that I was given was (in pertinent part): >> >> for OLD in * >> do >> NEW=`echo $OLD|sed s/\ /\_/g | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]` >> echo "OLD=\"$OLD\"" >> echo "NEW=\"$NEW\"" >> echo -e "mv \"$OLD\" \"$NEW\"\n" >> done >> >> But while the messages sent to the console indicated what I wanted to do >> was happening, and there were no errors reported, no changes were >> actually being made to the filenames. >> >> I read the echo man page and it seemed that the line >> >> echo -e "mv \"$OLD\" \"$NEW\"\n" >> >> didn't actually execute the mv command, so I added the line >> >> mv $OLD $NEW >> >> after it, so it now reads >> >> for OLD in * >> do >> NEW=`echo $OLD|sed s/\ /\_/g | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]` >> echo "OLD=\"$OLD\"" >> echo "NEW=\"$NEW\"" >> echo -e "mv \"$OLD\" \"$NEW\"\n" >> mv $OLD $NEW >> done >> >> But this results in the error >> >> mv: when moving multiple files, last argument must be a directory >> >> even though $NEW does not yet exist, so I am not really moving multiple >> files. >> >> What am I doing wrong? > > > I think what it might need is > > mv "$OLD" "$NEW". That solved the problem. As Sean Finney said: > OLD="unclean name" > NEW="unclean_name" > mv $OLD $NEW > >will result in > > mv unclean name unclean_name > Which is kinda odd because then the problem wasn't so much that unclean_name wasn't a directory as the error suggested, but that unclean and name didn't exist as separate files and I would have expected a "file not found" error instead. Anyway, making the change solved the problem in practice, but due to the foregoing, I am still confused as to what was happening. I am going to assume that mv, in its error handling first detected that there were multiple "file" arguments and that unclean_name did not exist as a subdirectory and returned that error before it tested to see if unclean, name and unclean_name existed as files. -- _______________________________________ Art Alexion Arthur S. Alexion LLC PGP fingerprint: 52A4 B10C AA73 096F A661 92D2 3B65 8EAC ACC5 BA7A The attachment -- signature.asc -- is my electronic signature; no need for alarm. Info @ http://mysite.verizon.net/art.alexion/encryption/signature.asc.what.html Key for signed PDFs available at http://mysite.verizon.net/art.alexion/encryption/ArthurSAlexion.p7c The validation string is TTJY-ZILJ-BJJG. ________________________________________ Attachment:
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