\_ I'm trying to rename a ton of files with a certain extension to another
\_ extension type.  If this is possible with the mv command I can't figure out
\_ the syntax..  Anyone know how to do this?

There's a foreach in your shell of choice that'll run something like

foreach f (*.DAT)
  mv $f $f.broken
end

but that can be kinda tedious to type in from whole cloth if you don't
do it a whole bunch.

Having seen this request any number of times now, I dropped out a
quick perl script that'll do it w/ args.  If it's worth doing once,
it's worth scripting for later reuse.  :-)

I called it map-mv after the lisp command 'map', which rocks.

Try map-mv -h for help.  

YMMV.

David


#!/usr/bin/perl

sub print_help
{
  print <<EOHELP;
usage $0: [flags]
-f [x]: from extension
-t [x]: to   extension
-n    : no renaming is to take place
-h    : this help
EOHELP
  ;
}

use Getopt::Std;

getopts('f:ht:n',\%opt);

if ($opt{h})
  {
    &print_help;
    exit;
  }

opendir(DIR, '.') || die "Can't open .: $!\n";
my @files = grep(/$opt{f}/, readdir(DIR));
closedir(DIR);

foreach my $file (@files)
{
  ($newfile = $file) =~ s/$opt{f}$/$opt{t}/;
  if ($opt{'n'})
    {
      print "rename $file, $newfile\n";
    }
  else
    {
      if (! rename ($file, $newfile))
	{
	  warn "Could not move $file to $newfile: $!\n";
	}
    }
  
}