Replace files with others from other folder matched by first token in filename

Question

Lets say I have two folders:

ls /A/
    01 - IncorrectName.flac
    02 - otherincorrect.flac

ls /B/
    01 - CorectName.flac
    02 - Othercorrect.flac

How would I move the files from dir A to B, but using the filenames from dir B?

Could I be doing this automatically with $ mv /A/01 - IncorrectName.flac /B/01 - CorrectName.flac ?

The first 5 characters of all filenames are always "NN - "

choroba · Answer 1 · 2011-12-03 01:49:04Z

up vote 4 down vote accepted

I am not sure I understand what you want, but this could be it in bash:

#! /bin/bash
for file in "$1"/[0-9][0-9]*.flac ; do
    newname="$2"${file#"$1"}
    newname=${newname:0:5+${#2}}
    mv "$file" "$newname"*
done

Update: should work with command line arguments. The trick was the length of the string was not constant anymore, hence ${#2}.

answered Dec 3 '11 at 0:10

	I want to make use of the existing filenames from directory B while renaming/moving the files in directory A, matching a file in A to the name in B by means of the first 5 characters of the filenames. That is, the track number of these flac files. – Alasdair Dec 3 '11 at 0:16
	Bash complains of "Bad substitution", my folder names have spaces, but moving them to just A and B has not had any effect, the problem remains. – Alasdair Dec 3 '11 at 0:28
	Hi even with the typo replaced I get "Bad substitution" – Alasdair Dec 3 '11 at 0:38
	GNU bash, version 4.1.5(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu) – Alasdair Dec 3 '11 at 0:38
	Strange. Are there any other files in the directories? In such a case, you should use some safer wildcard instead of ``, e.g. `[0-9][0-9].flac`. – choroba Dec 3 '11 at 0:41

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