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3

Creating a .bash file to test for loop

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 338 / 2 Years ago, fri, january 28, 2022, 5:56:44

I am trying to loop through all files located in a directory ending in .txt and rename them (replacing beginning with end). However I would like to take the output from this for loop and pipe it to a bash file so that I can check the file and make sure what I have written does what I want it to, then I can just execute the .bash file if what I see fits the task. I've tried

for file in *.txt ; do mv $file ${file//beginning/end} ; done | rename.bash

however this renamed the file and created an empty rename.bash

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ticeate

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4 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago gavgenerati · Accepted Answer

Put echo before mv. This will print the command instead of executing it.

As well:

Quote variables to avoid word splitting on spaces in the filenames. In this case you'll need to put quotes in quotes since you're outputting to a script.

I've never seen a .bash extension in use, so I'd prefer .sh instead for the output script.

You can't pipe directly to a file. Use output redirection > instead. If you need to use a pipe, use tee.

In sum:

for file in *.txt; do

    echo "mv '$file' '${file//beginning/end}'"

done > rename.sh