How to do a mass rename?

Question

I need to rename files names like this

transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=XXXXX

to just this

XXXXX.t         


        

Answer 1

You write a fairly simple shell script in which the trickiest part is munging the name.

The outline of the script is easy (bash syntax here):

for i in 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='*
do
    mv $i 
done

Modifying the name has many options. I think the easiest is probably an awk one-liner like

`echo $i  |  awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`

so...

for i in 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='*
do
    mv $i `echo $i |  awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`.txt 
done

update

Okay, as pointed out below, this won't necessarily work for a large enough list of files; the * will overrun the command line length limit. So, then you use:

$ find . -name 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=*' -prune -print |
while read
do
    mv $reply `echo $reply |  awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`.txt 
done