batch file rename. change at the second occurrence.

[supertight]

I have a batch of files with "item.id-number.variable.useless-info.avi"
I'm not sure why the security system saves the files to the server like this and I've looked all over the OS for some type of adjustment. But no dice.

I want to remove the "variable.useless-info" portion.
Normally, if the value after the 2nd "." in the file name was fixed, I would use something like this.

Code: Select all

for file in *.avi; do mv "$file" "${file/.v*/.avi}"  ; done

However, Given that the value after the 2nd "." is variable, I can't do that.
I know for sure there is a way to have the command to pass the 1st "." and operate at the 2nd "."
I've been googling like a maniac. I can't seem to find the correct format.

Any help with this is greatly appreciated.

[hunter86_bg]

Maybe something like this should do the trick:

Code: Select all

for i in *.avi ; do echo -n "$i ---> "; NEW=$(echo "$i" | sed 's/.v*.avi/.avi/'); mv "$i" "$NEW" ;echo ; done

[pjsr2]

If you are sure you always have five parts in the name separated by four dots, you can do the following:

Code: Select all

for i in *.*.*.*.avi ; do 
    mv "$i" "$(echo $i | cut -d . -f 1,2,5)"
done

[supertight]

Maybe something like this should do the trick:

Code: Select all

for i in *.avi ; do echo -n "$i ---> "; NEW=$(echo "$i" | sed 's/.v*.avi/.avi/'); mv "$i" "$NEW" ;echo ; done

But what if the value after the second "." is not "v"? It's different every time.

[supertight]

If you are sure you always have five parts in the name separated by four dots, you can do the following:

Code: Select all

for i in *.*.*.*.avi ; do 
    mv "$i" "$(echo $i | cut -d . -f 1,2,5)"
done

I see what you did here... It's not 4 every time. sometimes there is a time stamp too.

[pjsr2]

In bash scripts, * is a "greedy" operator: it matches as much as possible.
So *.*.*.avi will match both a.b.c.avi and a.b.c.d.avi. In other words: *.*.*.avi matches anything ending in .avi with at least 4 dots.

If you want to get a list of only those names that contain exactly 4 dots, you need to match anything that has at least 4 dots and filter out anything that has at least five dots. You can do this in the following way:

Code: Select all

for i in $(ls *.*.*.*.avi *.*.*.*.*.avi | sort | uniq -u) ; do
    mv "$i" "$(echo $i | cut -d . -f 1,2,5)"
done