Re: how to rename multiple files

[Fraser Campbell <fraser@wehave.net>]

On January 4, 2003 09:20 pm, the fabulous Gerald V. Livingston II wrote:

> Thank you. Took a couple of tries to get the syntax correct but I
> ended up with this:
>
> if [ `ls *.jpg 2>/dev/null|wc -l` -gt 0 ]
>
> then for i in *.jpg; do mmv "$i" `date +%s`-$a.jpg; a=a+1; done
>
> fi

If there were thousands of jpgs you'll probably still get a "too many 
arguments" error with that for loop.  I usually do something like this:

ls *.jpg | while read i; do
    mv "$i" `date +%s`-$a.jpg; a=a+1
done

If there are no files, no problem, if there are 10,000 files also no problem 
(although there might be a faster way?).

Fraser