One thing I liked about Linux is it’s hidden simplicity. When in a hurry, I usually go for the first working solution of a given problem. If the same problem appears often, I can get used to the first solution so much that I don’t even think about simplifying it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
A good example of this scenario is recursive renaming of files. It doesn’t happen that often though, but when it does, I am usually in a hurry and use the same old solution that I came across years ago. Here is how I am used to do it:<\/p>\n
[me@here dir]$ #Recursively rename some to other\r\n[me@here dir]$ for FILE in `find . -name somefile`\r\n[me@here dir]> do\r\n[me@here dir]> NEW=`echo $FILE | sed -e 's\/some\/other\/'`\r\n[me@here dir]> mv \"$FILE\" \"$NEW\"\r\n[me@here dir]> done<\/pre>\nNote that this is more of the base solution. Sometimes I have more parameters to
find<\/code>. Like when I don’t usesed<\/code> at all and just use the-exec mv<\/code> syntax. Sometimes I go as far as write a Perl script.<\/p>\nObviously, this solution is very ineffecient and overdesigned. But it always worked for me.<\/p>\n
Today I had to recursively rename a bunch of files and for once I wasn’t in a hurry. While I was slowly enterting in the characters and made a typing mistake, it occured to me that I am overdoing something. So I stopped and made a miniresearch. I spent much less than two minutes on finding a simplier and much nicer way of doing the same.<\/p>\n
Apparently, there is a standard utility
rename<\/code>. It can change the name of the file fully or partially. It needs two parameters – what to change and to what to change it – and a list of file to work with. Here is how it can be used to solve the problem above:<\/p>\n[me@here dir]$ # Recursively rename some to other\r\n[me@here dir]$ rename some other `find . -name some`<\/pre>\nNow that’s the beauty, isn’t it? It makes me think of all those characters I lost over the years…<\/p>\n
Update<\/ins>: edited heavily to remove some nonsense that I typed for no good reason.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n
One thing I liked about Linux is it’s hidden simplicity. When in a hurry, I usually go for the first working solution of a given problem. If the same problem appears often, I can get used to the first solution so much that I don’t even think about simplifying it.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,6,18],"tags":[1960,616,1531,74],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-9499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-linux","category-programming","tag-command-line","tag-filesystem","tag-operating-systems","tag-tips"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t