Re: cp output format

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

Quoting Wilko Fokken (wfokken@web.de):
> On Thu, Jul 16, 2015 at 08:23:13AM -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
> > Sorry for this elementary question. I want to do sequential copies with
> > a command like this: $ cp --backup=t  file .../destination/file. When
> > periodically run it produces file, file.~1~, file.~2~, etc.
> > 
> > How do I get rid of the "~" so that the backups are file.1, file.2,
> > etc.? 
> 
> If you are familiar with shell scripts, you can use a 'for' loop:
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
> for i in 1 2 3 ; do
> 	mv file.~${i}~ file.${i}
> done
> ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
> 
> You don't have to put each number into the 'for' loop yourself;
> with e.g. 17 files, you can write:
> 
> for i in `seq 1 17`; do
> 	...
> done

But, being familiar with shell scripts, if you write this as a script,
you now have an arbitrary limit on the number of backups it'll work for,
and you need a different version for each backup's base filename.
(And note that you need to protect any previous files with mv -i.)
A prename command can get all this right if you don't let Perl's
syntax scare you off.

Cheers,
David.