Rename file in Mac OS Terminal using Regex

Question

Hundreds of images need to be renamed with a terminal command using regex on MacOS 10.9 Mavericks.

The files are named this way:

0045AW489R3T(IPCAM)_0_20131124101245_931.jpg
0021DF025C8E(IPCAM)_0_20131127101721_44591.jpg
389223GT4Z6W(IPCAM)_0_20131128103423_7893282.jpg

They need to be renamed to this:

2013-11-24  10-12-45.jpg
2013-11-27  10-17-21.jpg
2013-11-28  10-34-23.jpg

Can anyone please show me how to do it?

Solution

You can try

for a in *.jpg ; do mv -- "$a" "${a:22:4}-${a:26:2}-${a:28:2} ${a:30:2}-${a:32:2}-${a:34:2}.jpg" ; done

A bit ugly, but it should get the job done. Like always, make sure to test on a copy before.

Comments

[Admin]

Why do you want to use a regular expression?

[Admin]

You might find the answer to this question a guide to what you want to do. stackoverflow.com/questions/13278391/…

[Admin]

I just assumed that a regular expression would be the only way to do it. Now I know that I was wrong.

[Admin]

Yeah, if its fixed format, probably don't need a regex. But, if badly formed filename sneaks in, a regex can give you more options for a recovery.

[Admin]

Not complete, but I use something like: for a in *; do b=$(echo $a | perl -pe 's/^\d(\d\d)/\1/'); mv "$a" "$b"; done

[Admin]

Are the ${a:22:4} substrings? start at character 22 and pull 4 characters?

[damienfrancois]

Yes they are. Assuming, as the in example, that all strings are formatted the same way.

[Admin]

This works, I was able to embedd this into my Hazel.app folder action as intended. Thank you.