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Accepted
s.k
Asked: 2020-01-20 05:08:27 +0800 CST

Swap parts of filenames

  • 772

Problem

I have thousands folders, which names are structured like:
firstName_lastName_date
for which I want to swap the two first parts using the underscore _ as a separator in order to end up with:
lastName_firstName_date

Warning

lastName may be be preceded by a nobiliary particle, separated with an extra _ in the input folders.
For example:
firstName_de_lastName_date
firstName_von_lastName_date

For which the wanted output should be:
de_lastName_firstName_date
von_lastName_firstName_date

Information

  • date is always the last element.
  • First names are single words.
  • Last names are single words or composed words (2) with a particle.

Tools

I want to do that using rename in bash, preferably, or shell Parameter expansion.

References

https://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/html_node/Regular-Expressions.html

batch-rename rename

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can do it using the Perl-based rename I think, using a mix of non-greedy and greedy matches ex.

    $ rename -n 's/^(.*?)_(.*)_(.*?)$/$2_$1_$3/' *
rename(firstName_de_lastName_date, de_lastName_firstName_date)
rename(firstName_lastName_date, lastName_firstName_date)
rename(firstName_von_lastName_date, von_lastName_firstName_date)

    The non-greedy modifier on the last (date) group isn't really necessary - but I like the symmetry.

    Alternatively, with the shell alone

    $ for f in *; do 
    m="${f#*_}"; m="${m%_*}"; echo mv -- "$f" "${m}_${f%%_*}_${f##*_}";
  done
mv -- firstName_de_lastName_date de_lastName_firstName_date
mv -- firstName_lastName_date lastName_firstName_date
mv -- firstName_von_lastName_date von_lastName_firstName_date
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