Need help renaming files a certain way

[KolosoK]

Hello,

I am trying to write a script that renames files a certain way. For example, if the input is " ren '*a' '*b' " all files in the current directory that end with a would end with b instead.

Here's what I have so far:

#!/bin/bash

for f in *$1; do
  j=${f%$1}$2
  mv $f $j
done

However, it is not working properly. What it does is it renames the files to the second arg. How can I fix it?

EDIT: well, it kinda works, but not fully. If a filename is "test" and I do " ren '*st' '*aa' " the result becomes "te*aa" instead of just "teaa". How to get rid of the *?

Thank you for your help!

[i92guboj]

Untested, but you should strip the * from the second argument:

  j=${f%$1}${2/\*/}

[KolosoK]

Thanks for your help! I played around with it and this seemed to work for me:

#!/bin/bash

tmp=$(echo $2 | tr -d "*")

for f in *$1; do
  j=${f%$1}$tmp
  mv $f $j
done

[drl]

Hi.

If you are interested in a more general renaming utility, see mved

It uses "=" as an additional meta-character to provide flexibility in specifying patterns of strings ... cheers, drl

[KolosoK]

After testing my script for a bit, I found out that it renames folders as well as files. I would like to add an option/flag/argument so that I can use this way to rename both folders and files:

ren '*st' '*aa'

...and this way to rename files only:

ren -f '*st' '*aa'

How can I go about ignoring folders this way?