Copy Sequential Files

Question

I have 12 files named dmp_000, dmp_001, etc, all the way to dmp_011. I would like to copy all of them to rdmp_000, rdmp_001, and so on, sequentially so the numbered files coincide. There must be an easy way to do this rather than individually? Thank you!

Answer 1

I used this command to generate some sample data

% for  i in `seq 0 11`;do touch dmp_$(printf "%03d" $i);done

% ls
dmp_000  dmp_001  dmp_002  dmp_003  dmp_004  dmp_005  dmp_006  dmp_007  dmp_008  dmp_009  dmp_010  dmp_011

To duplicate the files and preserve the original files modify/create dates:

% for i in dmp*;do cp -p "$i" "r${i}";done

% ls
dmp_000  dmp_002  dmp_004  dmp_006  dmp_008  dmp_010  rdmp_000  rdmp_002  rdmp_004  rdmp_006  rdmp_008  rdmp_010
dmp_001  dmp_003  dmp_005  dmp_007  dmp_009  dmp_011  rdmp_001  rdmp_003  rdmp_005  rdmp_007  rdmp_009  rdmp_011

To move the files wdmp* to rdmp*

% for i in wdmp*;do newname=$(echo $i|sed 's/^w/r/'); mv "$i" "$newname";done

NOTE: You could also have used @warl0ck's answer for that using the rename command.

Answer 2

If the use of zsh is acceptable, then:

      autoload -U zmv         # load zmv
      zmv -C 'dmp_(*)' 'rdmp_$1' # rename files

See this link for more examples.

Answer 3

Try rename command, and only rename those started with dmp_,

rename dmp rdmp dmp_*

To keep the files, try an alternate method like this,

for x in dmp_*; do cp $x r$x; done

Answer 4

I'd do this

for f in dmp_{000..011}; do [ -f $f ] && cp "$f" "r$f"; done