adding text to filename before extension

Question

I would like to add text to the end of filename but before the extension. Right now I am trying,

for f in *.shp; do echo $f_poly; done

the output is,

Quercus_acutifolia.shp_poly
Quercus_agrifolia.shp_poly
Quercus_corrugata.shp_poly
Quercus_cortesii.shp_poly
Quercus_costaricensis.shp_poly
Quercus_havardii.shp_poly
Quercus_hemisphaerica.shp_poly
Quercus_kelloggii.shp_poly
Quercus_knoblochii.shp_poly
Quercus_laceyi.shp_poly

I want it to be,

Quercus_acutifolia_poly.shp
Quercus_agrifolia_poly.shp
Quercus_corrugata_poly.shp
Quercus_cortesii_poly.shp
Quercus_costaricensis_poly.shp
Quercus_havardii_poly.shp
Quercus_hemisphaerica_poly.shp
Quercus_kelloggii_poly.shp
Quercus_knoblochii_poly.shp
Quercus_laceyi_poly.shp

score 43 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 26 '12 at 21:02

43

Using standard POSIX parameter expansion:

for f in *.shp; do printf '%s\n' "${f%.shp}_poly.shp"; done

answered Nov 26 '12 at 21:02

jw013

51,212

Awesome that is exactly what I needed. – Sam007 Nov 26 '12 at 21:05
2

Might be better with an explanation how it works. The Doug answer is pretty easy, on the other hand. – Display Name Jun 23 '15 at 12:41
@SargeBorsch What do you need explained? My answer, the snippet in the question, and Doug's answer are only differ by a few characters, and Doug's answer explains even less than mine so I don't know what it is you want. If you just compare the difference in the two outputs in the question it should be trivially easy to figure out what they do. I can explain why my answer is preferable to Doug's. 1. I use printf with a format string instead of the less portable echo. 2. I use parameter expansion which is more efficient than calling an external binary (basename) for such a simple task. – jw013 Jun 23 '15 at 14:43
3

Then the command to rename the files would be this: for f in *.shp; do mv $f ${f%.shp}_poly.shp; done – Patch92 Feb 13 '19 at 12:28
1

Is printf required here? If not, using it instead of the echo makes the answer more confusing than it needs to be. The little gained in portability (echo is ubiquitious nowadays) is lost in comprehensibility for novices. – Hashim Aziz Nov 27 '20 at 05:49
@Prometheus Here's the long answer. Short answer, yes printf is better. If I replaced it with echo I couldn't guarantee that it would work correctly on every machine with something named echo. – jw013 Nov 27 '20 at 22:36

ccpizza · Answer 2 · 2023-09-02T08:30:23.490

8

As the question is for bash there is no need for external utilities, since you can use bash regexps:

for f in *.shp
do
    mv -v "${f}" "${f%.*}_MYSUFFIX.${f##*.}"
done

^{❗️Warning: for f in *.ext is not reliable as it will break on file names containing spaces, quotes or other reserved characters. A failsafe approach would be using something like find . -iname '*.shp' -exec sh -c 'mv -v "${1}" "${1%.*}_MYSUFFIX.${f##*.}"' _ {} \;. If you don't need recursive traversal then add -maxdepth 1}

edited Sep 02 '23 at 08:30

answered Feb 11 '19 at 14:53

ccpizza

1,723

1

I like this one the most since it works generically for any file extension. Thanks! – Hans Sep 02 '21 at 06:59
This is the best answer. Short, precise and compliant. No subshells. Works with any extension (for i in *.{yml,yaml}; do ...). Nitpicking: 1. Use f. i is no numerical index. 2. The question is about echo, not mv. – wedi Jan 19 '22 at 18:44

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 27 '12 at 21:09

8

Sometimes there is a tool called "rename" installed.

rename 's/\.shp$/_poly.shp/' *shp

It might not be portable but it is easy to use.

answered Nov 27 '12 at 21:09

Chad Clark

316

1

This is the only one that worked for me, great answer! – wanderer0810 Dec 22 '17 at 06:57

score 5 · Answer 4 · edited Nov 26 '12 at 22:14

5

Use this:

for file in *.shp; do echo $(basename $file .shp)_poly.shp; done

edited Nov 26 '12 at 22:14

Michael Durrant

42,013

answered Nov 26 '12 at 21:05

doneal24

5,059

4

Using basename is slower and less efficient than letting the shell do the work by itself. This may be noticeable for very large numbers of files. – jw013 Nov 26 '12 at 21:14
1

Also, there are missing quotes and --s and it fails for filenames that have newline characters before the .shp. – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 16 '16 at 22:57
1

Thanks for giving an answer I can actually work with for my purpose. This is bash help, not code golf. (reading over this.. I realize it may have sounded like I was being sarcastic. More gripping about the other answers on here than yours. Thanks again) – Tim Jul 04 '19 at 15:48

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 16 '16 at 22:35

3

This worked better for me:

for f in *; do NEW=${f%.webm}_2016.webm; mv ${f} "${NEW}"; done

answered Nov 16 '16 at 22:35

Vinnie James

131

Well this looks a lot like the accepted answer except that you probably want for f in *.webm, you forgot to quote the ${f} and you're missing a --. – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 16 '16 at 22:45
1

The accepted answer doesnt work on OSX, it only prints out the new file names, it doesnt actually rename the files – Vinnie James Nov 16 '16 at 22:47
1

Of course, it shows you how to use shell expansions to get the new file name, in response to the question that is also outputing a file name (with echo), but not the required one. – Stéphane Chazelas Nov 16 '16 at 22:54

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Oct 06 '15 at 10:29

1

If they are in different locations then run :-

for i in ` find /root/test/ -name "*.shp" ` ;
do
  mv $i ` echo $i | sed 's/.shp$/_poly.shp/g' ` ;
done

edited Oct 06 '15 at 10:29

X Tian

10,463

answered Oct 06 '15 at 10:23

Shankey Ravi

11
1

adding text to filename before extension

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