I need to rename files in batch–the other questions I browsed don’t exactly address my problem. The names of my files are generated non-deterministically, so I can’t predict what they will be named. I do know that they will start with NORMAL and end with -lib*. I’d like to replace everything in between with some string X. For example,
| | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib1.concordant | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib1.deletion | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib1.divergent | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib1.inversion | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib1.translocation | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.concordant | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.deletion | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.divergent | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.insertion | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.inversion | | |-- NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.translocation
So it will probably be of the form rename "s/something/X/", but I don’t know what that something should be, as I don’t know how to use regex.
Answers:
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Method 1
The useful Perl powered rename isn’t always available on all distros. For example, Fedora and CentOS (and presumably RedHat) use a basic rename utility that does basic search and replace and nothing much else.
If you’re unfortunate enough to be using one of those, then something like the following may help:
for oldname in *; do
newname=$(echo "$oldname" | sed -e 's/(NORMAL).*(-lib.*)/1X2/')
mv "$oldname" "$newname"
done
Method 2
If you are lucky enough to have rename available, then the following should be sufficient:
rename 's/(NORMAL).*(-lib)/$1X$2/' *
Method 3
There are two unrelated programs called rename. The one found on Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, Mint, …) is a Perl script, and its first argument is a Perl expression that transforms the old name into the new name. With that script, you can do
rename 's/.*-lib/NORMAL_X-lib/' NORMAL_*-lib*
The s operator performs a regular expression replacement. There are oodles of regular expression tutorials on the web, e.g. 1. .*-lib matches the string up to the last occurrence of -lib (.* matches any string), so s/.*-lib/NORMAL_X-lib/ replaces the NORMAL_blahblah-lib part by NORMAL_X-lib.
If you have a Linux distribution that isn’t derived from Debian, then the rename utility is one that is suitable for almost no practical task. You can use a shell loop instead.
for x in NORMAL_*-lib*; do
mv "$x" "NORMAL_X-lib${x##*-lib}"
done
${x##*-lib} is the value of the variable x minus the part up to the last occurrence of -lib. This is standard parameter expansion syntax.
This task is easiest in zsh, with its zmv function. Put autoload -U zmv in your .zshrc (or run it on the command line for a once-off), then run
zmv 'NORMAL_*-(lib*)' 'NORMAL_X-$1'
Method 4
You could consider using lookarounds, like (?<=NORMAL).*?(?=-lib) i.e.
$ rename -v -n -- 's/(?<=NORMAL).*?(?=-lib)/X/' * NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.insertion renamed as NORMALX-lib4.insertion NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.inversion renamed as NORMALX-lib4.inversion NORMAL_H_LS-A7-A0CE-10A-01D-A017-09-lib4.translation renamed as NORMALX-lib4.translation
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