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I have several files in a folder that all follow a naming convention of:

 rs1.txt  
 rs2.txt
 rs3.txt

Some of these files were produced by myself, and some were produced by my colleague. I was hoping to change the file name based on who owns the file. So if we have 

 rs1.txt  ME 
 rs2.txt  ME
 rs3.txt  HIM

My files would change to:

 srs1.txt  ME 
 srs2.txt  ME
 rs3.txt  HIM

Is there any conceivable way to do this?

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5 Answers 5

Reset to default
3 
find . -user ME -exec mv {} s{} \;

This looks for files owned by ME and runs an mv command on each one. This time, you do not want the + option at the end (which is often preferred). You can add constraints to the list of files as you like: -name rs*.txt, for example.

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8
  • Why don't I want the + option? Could you explain?
    – User101
    Mar 22, 2013 at 15:07
  • You couldn't call mv{} s{} directly, because of trailing path. You'll get something like: mv ./test.txt s./test.txt. That isn't correct. You should use printf and then call mv.
    – Oleg S Kleshchook
    Mar 22, 2013 at 15:34
  • @OlegSKleshchook Could you show me what you mean? find . -user ME -printf -exec mv {} s{} \; ??
    – User101
    Mar 22, 2013 at 15:38
  • 1
    @User101 Oops. My bad. Looks it must be -maxdepth 1
    – Oleg S Kleshchook
    Mar 22, 2013 at 15:49
  • 1
    The + is useful when you want to provide a list of file names to a single invocation of the command. Here, though, you want to execute each mv with just two arguments (old name and new name), so you need to execute mv once for each file that's found. Or you use a more complex rename command, such as a Perl-based one that can do a regex mapping, so -exec rename 's/^/s/' {} + is now appropriate. (Beware: there are several sub-species of command called rename, and they're mostly feeble by comparison with the Perl-based one.)
    – Jonathan Leffler
    Mar 22, 2013 at 16:04
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Here's one way to do it. this renames all files in the current directory with user 'ME', prepending 's' to the name.

for f in *
do
    owner=$(ls -l | awk '{print $3}')
    if [ $owner = ME ];then
       mv $f s$f
    fi
done
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3
  • ~~If I try this:~~ for f in *; do owner=$(ls -l |awk 'print $3}'); if [$owner -eq Stephanie ]; then mv $f s$f; fi; done ~~I get this response over and over:~~ awk: print $3} awk: ^ syntax error bash: [: -eq: unary operator expected awk: print $3} awk: ^ syntax error bash: [: -eq: unary operator expected awk: print $3} ~~Am I missing something?~~
    – User101
    Mar 22, 2013 at 15:36
  • sorry about that. I've updated the answer. Changed -eq to =. But the find solution is better in my opinion.
    – suspectus
    Mar 22, 2013 at 15:41
  • Thanks, I just like to try all the answers I get. I find it helps me get to know some of the commands better. :)
    – User101
    Mar 22, 2013 at 16:00
1 
USER="ME"
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -user $USER -printf "%f\n" | xargs -I {}  mv {} s{}
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ls -l |fgrep ME|awk '{print "mv " $NF " " $NF.1}'

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1337 }{4xx0|22 |>0 !7 1!|<3 7}{!5: 

for i in `echo $(ls -n | grep \
  \`getent passwd |grep $USER| cut -d: -f3\` | 
  awk '{print $NF}')`; do 
      if [[ -f $i ]]; then echo mv \"$i\" \"s${i}\"; 
 fi ;done | sh
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