Index
Subject
: LUG: Using sed to mass rename files
From
: "Daniel Underwood" <daniel.underwood@ncsu.[redacted]>
Date
: Wed, 03 Mar 2010 03:00:15 -0500
+-----------+
| Objective |
+-----------+
Change these filenames:
F00001-0708-RG-biasliuyda
F00001-0708-CS-akgdlaul
F00001-0708-VF-hioulgigl
to these filenames:
F0001-0708-RG-biasliuyda
F0001-0708-CS-akgdlaul
F0001-0708-VF-hioulgigl
+------------+
| Shell Code |
+------------+
To test:
ls F00001-0708-*|sed 's/\(.\).\(.*\)/mv & \1\2/'
To perform:
ls F00001-0708-*|sed 's/\(.\).\(.*\)/mv & \1\2/' | sh
+---------------+
| My Question |
+---------------+
I don't understand the sed code. I understand what the substitution
command
$ sed 's/something/mv'
means. And I understand regular expressions somewhat. But I don't
understand what's happening here:
\(.\).\(.*\)
or here:
& \1\2/
The former, to me, just looks like it means: "a single character,
followed by a single character, followed by any length sequence of a
single character"--but surely there's more to it than that. As far as
the latter part:
& \1\2/
I have no idea. I really want to understand this code. Please help me
out here, guys.
TIA,
Daniel
--
Daniel Underwood
North Carolina State University
Graduate Student - Operations Research
email: daniel.underwood@ncsu.[redacted]
phone: XXX.302.3291
web: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~djunderw/
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