Trying to rename files to a random string. I took some code from an answer to this question in order to generate a random string of characters.
#!/bin/bash
chars=( {a..z} {A..Z} {0..9} )
function rand_string {
local c=$1 ret=
while((c--)); do
ret+=${chars[$((RANDOM%${#chars[@]}))]}
done
printf '%s\n' "$ret"
}
output=$(rand_string 10)
For practice I made a directory at $HOME/practice with a few plain text files.
/Users/me/practice/testfile1.txt
/Users/me/practice/testfile2.txt
/Users/me/practice/testfile3.txt
When trying to rename these files a random string, instead of getting 3 random names, I am instead left with 1 file renamed to a random string.
for file in $HOME/practice/*
do
mv "$file" $HOME/practice/"$output"
done
#result
/Users/me/practice/i6TP3wiMDD
Replacing mv "$file" ~/practice/"$output" with echo "$file" "$output" shows me that the random string is being repeated after every file instead of generating a new random string for every file.
/Users/me/practice/testfile1.txt i6TP3wiMDD
/Users/me/practice/testfile2.txt i6TP3wiMDD
/Users/me/practice/testfile3.txt i6TP3wiMDD
My question is two part:
- Why is only 1 file being renamed?
- How can I generate a new random string for each file being renamed?
I will also say that the above random character script is above my current understanding. I know that it works for generating random characters. But the inner workings of it are still somewhat unclear to me.
