Question

I have a directory with folder structure as follows:

-- DATA -- ABD 1231345 -- 01-08-12 // date in mm-dd-yy format
                       -- 03-09-12
                       -- 06-11-12

        -- DEF 4859480 -- 02-10-12
                       -- 05-10-12
                       -- 07-10-12

I would like to batch rename this DATA folder as follows

-- DATA -- ABD 1231345 -- 2012_01_08 // date in yyyy_mm_dd format with underscore
                       -- 2012_03_09
                       -- 2012_06_11

        -- DEF 4859480 -- 2012_02_10
                       -- 2012_05_10
                       -- 2012_07_10

Do you have a suggestion on how to accomplish using command line on Mac OSX / unix?

Answer 1

You could use a for loop and awk, parsing each file-name into your specified format and then mv to rename the original to the new name:

for dir in DATA/*; do \
    pushd "$dir"; # change directory \
    for file in *; do \
        path=`echo $file | awk -F- '{print "20"$3"_"$1"_"$2}'`; \
        mv $file $path; # "rename" the file \
    done; \
    popd; # restore original directory \
done;

This can be executed in folder above DATA. If you want to execute it directly in DATA, update the first loop to read for dir in *; do instead of DATA/*. It tells awk to use the - as the delimiter (instead of whitespace), and then reconstructs a string from “mm-dd-yy” to “20yy_mm_dd”.

Using pushd and popd will enable the script to change the current directory to each subdirectory inside DATA (pushd) and then, after moving all necessary files will change back to the original (popd). Doing this will save you a lot of parsing-effort trying to save directory paths / etc.