ask Dr LJ

[gsh]

I have several hundred files that have been retrieved from a content mangagement
system that munged the filenames.The files are all named Rendition-XX_orig_file.name
I'm sure there is a two line perl or other scripty language that can
rename the files back to orig_file.name, but I'm not enough of a perl hacker
to figure it out. Does anyone have a sugguestion that would cause me
to worship your sheer geek foo?

Comments

[wotw]

As a non-perl-hacker, here's what I would do.

First

"ls -l Rendition* > foo"

Then

"cut -b55-80 foo>foo2"

(adjusting the 55-80 range as needed so you get a list of all your
file names)

Then edit foo2, replacing "Rendition-XX_" with "doit "

Then create an executable file called "doit" that reads

"mv Rendition-XX_%1 %1"

Then make foo2 executable, and execute it.

[gsh]

That sounds like it should work.

I'm amused at the number of scripts I've written in my life that I called "doit".

[wotw]

Except that because this is unix, I'd use $1 instead
of %1. Sorry.

[geekchick]

Are they all in the same directory? You could try something like this (assuming that the "XX" are digits):

ls * | perl -ne 'chomp; next unless -e; $old = $_; s/Rendition-\d+_//; next if -e; rename $old, $_;'

I'm pretty rusty and I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but I think that should work. May want to test it on a copy of some of the files first. =)

[gsh]

Hmm, that worked for about 430 of the 480 files, and I can't figure out
why it didn't work for the others. Are you on any IM type client?