Mv Command In Bash Script

[shanenin]

I am writing a script to rename avi files. The current files have spaces in them

from the current directory I have these two titles. for example

"sopranos-301 the car episode"

"sopranos-302 the murder episode"

I am running the script from the directory the files are in

for i in *; do
    echo "enter the new name you would like to change the file to"
    read INPUT
    # i have the mv command in quotes because the file has spaces in the name
    mv \"$i\" ${INPUT}
done

it is giving me an arror about mv can't move multiple files to a non directory. As far as I can see

 \"$i\"

is only specifing one file

[jcl]

Escaping the quotes is disabling their quoting behavior; you end up prepending a quote to the first word of the file name and append a quote to the last. Replace the escaped quotes with unescaped double quotes and it'll work.

[shanenin]

Thanks, that worked. doing dumb stuff like that, I wonder how I ever manage to get anything to work. If you care to save a few keystrokes when remnaming stuff feel free to use this script

#!/bin/sh
# for this script to work you must be in the directory that contains the files you 
# want to rename

clear
echo "Does the directory listed contain the files you would like to rename?"
echo
echo "`pwd`"
echo
echo "enter return to continue, or type 'quit'(and return) to exit the script and change to the correct directory"

read F
if [ $F = "quit" ]
    then exit
fi

clear

for i in *; do
    clear
    echo "do you want to change the name of the file"
    echo
    echo $i ?
    echo
    echo "enter 'y' to rename it, or 's' to skip this file, or 'q' to exit this program"

    read INPUT
    while [ ${INPUT} != y ] && [ ${INPUT} != s ] && [ ${INPUT} != q ]; do
        echo "please choose from choices y, s, or q"
        read INPUT
    done

    case ${INPUT} in
        y)  echo "enter the new name you would like to change the file to"
            read FILE_NAME
            mv "$i" ${FILE_NAME}
            if [ "$?" = 0 ]; then 
                echo "the file named $i was changed to ${FILE_NAME}"
                echo "press return to continue"
                read pause
            else 
                echo "an error occurred when moving the file, exiting the script"
                exit 1 
            fi;;

        s)  echo "the file $i was not renamed";;

        q)  exit;;
    esac

done

Edited July 24, 2005 by shanenin