Error in simple bash script - mv + awk

Question

I have attempted to write a script that renames a list of directories in a folder. It is a bash script and I am only using awk to accomplish this task.

Current form:

[2015] Name of the album

Desired form:

Name of the album - [2015]

My script:

#! /usr/bin/env bash
for f in \[*; do
    mv -t "$f" "$( awk -F '\] ' ' {print $2 " - " $1 "]"}' <<<"$f" )"
done

When I execute the above script, I get the following error:

mv: cannot stat 'In Dreams [EP] - [1963]': No such file or directory

Answer 1

You don't want -t in your situation. That will tell mv to try to move the desired name to the directory named $f.

It would expand to something like:

mv -t "[2015] Name of the album" "Name of the album - [2015]"

which would be likely what you want without the -t. As is it treats $f as the target directory name into which all the other arguments should be moved.

Answer 2

If you have access to perl-rename (called rename on Debian based systems including Ubuntu, perl-rename on Arch and prename on others), you can do:

perl-rename -n 's/(\[.*?\])\s*(.*)/$2 - $1/' ./\[*

Explanation

• -n : this makes perl-rename print what it will do without actually renaming anything. Run it like this and, if it looks like it's working as expected, remove the -n to make it actually rename.
• s/from/to/ : will replace from with to.
• s/(\[.*?\])\s*(.*)/$2 - $1/' : here, the from is everything between the first [ and the first ] (\[.*?\]). Then 0 or more whitespace characters (\s*) and then everything else (.*). The parentheses around the patters will capture them, letting us use them as $1 and $2 respectively on the right hand side of the substitution. So, that will put everything after the [ ] ($2) before the brackets ($1).
• ./\[* run it on all files and directories in the current directory whose name begins with a [.

Answer 3

Your solution works if you remove the -t option, as Eric explained.

This is an alternative solution using variable substitutions rather than awk to move the bits of the filename around:

for name in '['*; do
    tag="${name%% *}"
    title="${name#* }"
    mv "$name" "$title - $tag"
done

• ${name%% *} removes everything after the first space in $name (including the space), and
• ${name#* } removes everything before the first space (including the space).