Renaming large files

Question

Could someone help me to create a script (or oneliner) that will perform this operation for a directory of files?
mv "first file.ext" "first file(word).exe"
(where the "word" part can vary)
In other words, I need to rename a file to a similarly named file that has another word in parentheses at the end (but before the extension). That word varies depending on when the file was created, so I can't just do something like "mv file.ext file(new).ext", unforunately. These filenames also have spaces.
Thanks in advance for any help!

Answer 1

i've fallin in love with rename; i'm not sure i fully understand what you're going for but maybe this'll get you in the right direction
$ ls
file1.exe file2.exe file3.exe
$ rename .exe \(word\).exe *.exe
$ ls
file1(word).exe file2(word).exe file3(word).exe
$
EDIT: now i see what you going for...
as per here:
linux does not *normally* store creation dates/times... there's a myriad of ways to find 'last-modified' type information which could be passed to a variable within your script.
i'd try this, can't test right now so you'll have to tweak i'm sure...
# usage commandname [directory to act on]
if [ -z $1 ];then
echo Give target directory;
exit 0;
fi
find "$1" -name '*.exe' | while read file ; do
mod=[command to get your "word" variable] $file
newname=$(echo "$file" | sed s/.exe/\("$mod"\).exe/g)
mv $file $newname
echo ""$file" changed to -> "$newname"" # for debugging
done
exit 0
Last edited by brisbin33 (2008-11-26 17:53:51)