Rename file using xargs -a file

Question

I have several files:

test1.log
test2.log
test3.log
test.txt

test.txt contains:

./test1.log
./test2.log
./test3.log

I want to be able to use my:

test.txt

with

xargs -a test.txt ......

to rename

 test1.log
 test2.log
 test3.log

to .txt files:

 test1.txt
 test2.txt
 test3.txt

Is there a way of doing so with rename,sed,sub,or awk?

Possible duplicate of [Batch renaming files in command line and Xargs](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10972002/batch-renaming-files-in-command-line-and-xargs) — alk, Oct 31 '15 at 08:02

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Jan 15 '22 at 00:38

3

I found my answer at this link:

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/8368/bulk-rename-files-with-sed-one-liner

It isn't exactly what I wanted to do, but it works:

ls *.log | sed -e 'p;s/.log/.txt/' | xargs -n2 mv

edited Jan 15 '22 at 00:38

kingsfoil

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answered Nov 01 '15 at 21:09

CalcGuy

169
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10

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 01 '21 at 23:44

If your sed skills are not as strong or you want to use the base of the name multiple times in a general way, the following strips the extension and then allows just constructing the command from the file name without the extension.

ls **/*.txt | sed 's/\.txt$//' | xargs -n1 -i mv {}.txt {}.md

The **/.txt uses the bash shopt globstar to include the sub directories. If you don't have the globstar shopt enabled, you can replace "ls **/.txt" with an instance of the find command.

Rename file using xargs -a file

2 Answers2