Hello

We have x files in a directory, never they have the same name, and the length name is also different

ie.

pedi04011999999999.txt
salidft2001dfa100104011999999999.txt

I would like change the name insert a character "." , for every eight characters

ie

pedi0401.19999999.99.txt
salidft2.001dfa10.01040119.99999999.txt



hope someone can help.

thanks

This assumes that the filenames will not currently contain more than one '.' (and that each has a file extension).

for fileName in *
do

newFileName=$(echo ${fileName%.*} | sed 's/.\{8\}/&\./g').${fileName#*.}
echo mv ${fileName} ${newFileName} #remove 'echo' when you're happy

done

I happy now, thats work fine.

Thanks Damian
Regards

Hi,
there is a little mistake in Damians solution.
If the filename is 8,16,... long then you have two points between the
filename and the extension. Like this :
salidft2001dfa100104011999999999.txt ==> salidft2.001dfa10.01040119.99999999..txt
12345678.txt ==> 12345678..txt

I have another solution for you. It is a little bit larger but it works how you want it.

The same as Damian said :
This assumes that the filenames will not currently contain more than one '.' (and that each has a file extension).

for oldFile in `ls *.txt`
do
newFile=`echo $oldFile | awk ' BEGIN { FS="."}
{
lang=length($1)
x=int(lang / 8)
y=lang / 8
newFile=""
i=0
while (i < x)
{
newFile=newFile""substr($1,i*8+1,8)"."
i=i+1
}
if ( x == y )
{
newFile=newFile""substr($1,i*8+1)""$2
}
else
{
newFile=newFile""substr($1,i*8+1)"."$2
}
print newFile
}'`
#The same as Damian said :
echo mv $oldFile $newFile #remove 'echo' when you're happy
done

Good point Peter.

Piping the command through sed 's/\.$//' will also fix the double periods.

Just for the hell of it, you could do the substitution all in one sed command...

echo $fileName | sed '{
:insDot
/[^.]\{9\}/ {
s/\([^.]\{8\}\)\([^.]\)/\1.\2/
b insDot
}
}'

This basically says: if the fileName contains a 9 character string that does not contain a '.', place a '.' after the 8th character. Repeat until the 9 character string is not found.

It's not perfect as for example, the string "123.1234567812345678" would be transformed to "123.12345678.12345678". Sant's original requirements suggest that this should really be "123.1234.56781234.5678".

Damian

I know gotos are considered harmful, but wow! There's a lot more to sed than I first reckoned ...

Hi Damian,
i am brim over with enthusiasm about your knowledge.
It is realy great.

Hi periods Chillies ;-),
excuse my bad englisch. Now I know that the point is a dot or a period.
Thanks for adjust me.

Sed is horrible! It does the job *really* quick but even when you write the stuff yourself, it can be a nightmare to figure out what you were trying to do.

Take a look at this (aaagh!)...

http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr/~george/sed/OLD/dc.sed.txt

Ow! ow! ow!

I think Greg had too much time on his hands, waiting for processes to finish.