Re: Renaming all files in a directory

That may not work correctly, depending on what characters are in the file name:

$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:23 four
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:23 one
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:23 two ? three
$ ls | perl -nle 'BEGIN { $counter = 0 }; $old = $_; $new = "caption" 
+. "$counter" . ".txt"; rename( $old, $new ); $counter++;'
$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:23 caption0.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:23 caption1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:23 two ? three
[download]

Better to use perl's built-in glob function:

$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:28 four
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:28 one
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:28 two ? three
$ perl -e '$counter = 0; for ( <*> ) { $old = $_; $new = "caption" . "
+$counter" . ".txt"; rename( $old, $new ); $counter++; }'
$ ls -l
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:28 caption0.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:28 caption1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 john john 0 Feb  1 20:28 caption2.txt
[download]

Comment on Re: Renaming all files in a directory Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: Renaming all files in a directory by Anonymous Monk on Feb 02, 2021 at 12:46 UTC
Why needs the counter be inside a BEGIN block?	[reply]
Re^3: Renaming all files in a directory by Cristoforo (Curate) on Feb 02, 2021 at 16:57 UTC
In this example, perl is reading line by line, (perl -nle ...) and you want the counter to only be initialized (once) at the start of the script.	[reply]


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