Rename part of file name based on exact match in contents of another file

Question

I would like to rename a bunch of files by changing only one part of the file name and doing that based on an exact match in a list in another file. For example, if I have

Answer 1

You could use awk to generate commands:

% awk '{print "for files in sample_*; do mv $files ${files/" $1 "/" $2 "}; done" }' replacements.txt 
for files in sample_*; do mv $files ${files/ACGT/name1}; done
for files in sample_*; do mv $files ${files/TTTTTC/longername12}; done
for files in sample_*; do mv $files ${files/ACCCGGG/nam7}; done
for files in sample_*; do mv $files ${files/ACGTA/another4}; done

Then either copy/paste or pipe the output directly to your shell:

% awk '{print "for files in sample_*; do mv $files ${files/" $1 "/" $2 "}; done" }' replacements.txt | bash

If you want the longer match string to be used first, sort the replacements first:

% sort -r replacements.txt | awk '{print "for files in sample_*; do mv $files ${files/" $1 "/" $2 "}; done" }' | bash