Change names of incrementally ordered range of files

Question

Say I have a range of files named: "blah-10-blah", "blah-11-blah" etc...up to "blah-30-blah".

I would like to change the names to "blah-20-blah", "blah-21-blah" etc...up to "blah-40-blah".

Is there a way of doing this in the terminal?

Answer 1

It's important to process the files in an inverse numerical order, otherwise the task will fail due to already existing files with the target filename:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name 'blah-??-blah' -print0 | sort -zr | xargs -0 rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e'

• find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name 'blah-??-blah' -print0: prints a NULL-separated list of the files in the current working directory matching the globbing pattern blah-??-blah;
• sort -zr: sorts the list in an inverse numerical order;
• xargs -0 rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e': renames the files substituting the first couple of digits after a dash with the correspondent value incremented by 10;

% tree
.
├── blah-10-blah
├── blah-11-blah
├── blah-12-blah
├── blah-13-blah
├── blah-14-blah
├── blah-15-blah
├── blah-16-blah
├── blah-17-blah
├── blah-18-blah
├── blah-19-blah
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
└── blah-30-blah

0 directories, 21 files
% find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name 'blah-??-blah' -print0 | sort -zr | xargs -0 rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e'
% tree
.
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
├── blah-30-blah
├── blah-31-blah
├── blah-32-blah
├── blah-33-blah
├── blah-34-blah
├── blah-35-blah
├── blah-36-blah
├── blah-37-blah
├── blah-38-blah
├── blah-39-blah
└── blah-40-blah

0 directories, 21 files

If using Zsh, the task can be heavily simplified, as Zsh allows to expand filenames in an inverse numerical order:

rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e' blah-??-blah(On)

% tree
.
├── blah-10-blah
├── blah-11-blah
├── blah-12-blah
├── blah-13-blah
├── blah-14-blah
├── blah-15-blah
├── blah-16-blah
├── blah-17-blah
├── blah-18-blah
├── blah-19-blah
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
└── blah-30-blah

0 directories, 21 files
% rename 's/-\K([0-9]{2})/$1+10/e' blah-??-blah(On)
% tree                                
.
├── blah-20-blah
├── blah-21-blah
├── blah-22-blah
├── blah-23-blah
├── blah-24-blah
├── blah-25-blah
├── blah-26-blah
├── blah-27-blah
├── blah-28-blah
├── blah-29-blah
├── blah-30-blah
├── blah-31-blah
├── blah-32-blah
├── blah-33-blah
├── blah-34-blah
├── blah-35-blah
├── blah-36-blah
├── blah-37-blah
├── blah-38-blah
├── blah-39-blah
└── blah-40-blah

0 directories, 21 files

Answer 2

You can do:

#!/bin/bash
files=( blah-??-blah )
for ((i=${#files[@]}-1; i>=0; i--)); do

    first="${files[$i]%%-*}" 
    num="$(grep -o '[0-9]\+' <<<"${files[$i]}")" 
    last="${files##*-}"

        echo mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last" 
done

If you are satisfied with everything, add | bash at the end to let the mv operation take place.

• We have put the relevant file names into an array files

• Then we have iterated over the elements of the array from the end i.e. from last to first

• first will have the first part of file name i.e. part prior to the first -

• last will have the last part of the file name i.e. the part after last -

• num will have the number in between two -

• mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last" will do the rename operation accordingly

Example:

$ ls -1
blah-10-blah
blah-11-blah
blah-12-blah
blah-13-blah
blah-14-blah
blah-15-blah
blah-16-blah
blah-17-blah
blah-18-blah
blah-19-blah
blah-20-blah
blah-21-blah
blah-22-blah
blah-23-blah
blah-24-blah
blah-25-blah
blah-26-blah
blah-27-blah
blah-28-blah
blah-29-blah
blah-30-blah
blah-foo-1
blah-foo-2

$ for ((i=${#files[@]}-1; i>=0; i--)); do first="${files[$i]%%-*}" \
    num="$(grep -o '[0-9]\+' <<<"${files[$i]}")" last="${files##*-}"; \ 
      echo mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last"; done

mv blah-30-blah blah-40-blah
mv blah-29-blah blah-39-blah
mv blah-28-blah blah-38-blah
mv blah-27-blah blah-37-blah
mv blah-26-blah blah-36-blah
mv blah-25-blah blah-35-blah
mv blah-24-blah blah-34-blah
mv blah-23-blah blah-33-blah
mv blah-22-blah blah-32-blah
mv blah-21-blah blah-31-blah
mv blah-20-blah blah-30-blah
mv blah-19-blah blah-29-blah
mv blah-18-blah blah-28-blah
mv blah-17-blah blah-27-blah
mv blah-16-blah blah-26-blah
mv blah-15-blah blah-25-blah
mv blah-14-blah blah-24-blah
mv blah-13-blah blah-23-blah
mv blah-12-blah blah-22-blah
mv blah-11-blah blah-21-blah
mv blah-10-blah blah-20-blah

$ for ((i=${#files[@]}-1; i>=0; i--)); do first="${files[$i]%%-*}" \
    num="$(grep -o '[0-9]\+' <<<"${files[$i]}")" last="${files##*-}";\ 
      echo mv "$first-$num-$last" "$first-$((num+10))-$last"; done | bash

$ ls -1
blah-20-blah
blah-21-blah
blah-22-blah
blah-23-blah
blah-24-blah
blah-25-blah
blah-26-blah
blah-27-blah
blah-28-blah
blah-29-blah
blah-30-blah
blah-31-blah
blah-32-blah
blah-33-blah
blah-34-blah
blah-35-blah
blah-36-blah
blah-37-blah
blah-38-blah
blah-39-blah
blah-40-blah
blah-foo-1
blah-foo-2

Answer 3

Basic idea of this approach is to throw all the files into temporary "basket" directory, and then pick them out one by one, create new name , and move back with new name into the original directory.

The script bellow takes a single argument ( $1 ), which is directory where the files you want to rename are located.

Demo

xieerqi:$ ls testdir                                                                                         
blah-10-blah  blah-20-blah  blah-30-blah  blah-40-blah

xieerqi:$ cat testdir/*                                                                                      
I am file 10 
I am file 20 
I am file 30 
I am file 40 

xieerqi:$ ./incrementNames.sh testdir                                                                        
blah-10-blah ../blah-20-blah
blah-20-blah ../blah-30-blah
blah-30-blah ../blah-40-blah
blah-40-blah ../blah-50-blah

xieerqi:$ ls testdir
blah-20-blah  blah-30-blah  blah-40-blah  blah-50-blah  TMP/

xieerqi:$ cat testdir/blah                                                                                   
blah-20-blah blah-30-blah blah-40-blah blah-50-blah 
xieerqi:$ cat testdir/blah-20-blah                                                                           
I am file 10 

xieerqi:$ cat testdir/blah-30-blah                                                                           
I am file 20 

Script

#!/bin/bash

if [ "$#" -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "Usage: incrementNames.sh /path/to/dir" && exit
fi

# navigate to target directory
# create temporary directory
cd "$1"
mkdir TMP
# move everything to TMP directory
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -iname "*-*" -exec mv -t TMP {} \+
# drop down to TMP directory pick filesback into the directory , and rename them as we go
cd TMP
find .  -maxdepth 1 -type f -iname "*-*" -printf "%f\n"  | sort  | while IFS= read FILENAME
do
        NEW="$( awk -F '-'  '{print $1FS$2+10FS$3 }' <<< "$FILENAME")"
        echo "$FILENAME" "../$NEW" 
        mv "$FILENAME" ../"$NEW"
done

Limitation

This script is specifically for files following pattern text-number-text, or at least text-number patter. It wont work for others