Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rutgers!att!ulysses!andante!alice!ark
From: ark@alice.UUCP (Andrew Koenig)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: simple question about mv
Message-ID: <8844@alice.UUCP>
Date: 27 Jan 89 22:01:46 GMT
References: <18216@adm.BRL.MIL>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Liberty Corner NJ
Lines: 22

In article <18216@adm.BRL.MIL>, DEG41560@ua1vm.ua.edu (Rob Smith) writes:
>  I know this is simple, but then again, so am I.  What if I want to mv a bunch
> of files with the same suffix to another suffix. The following does not
> work
> 
>     mv *.flip *.flop

If you give a bunch of operands to mv, the last one must be a directory
and all the others are moved into that directory.  Thus the last
(in alphabetical order) thing with a name of *.flop becomes the
target directory and everything else winds up thee.

This is almost surely not what you want.

To get what you want, try this:

	for i in *.flip
	do	mv $i `echo $i | sed 's/flip$/flop/'`
	done
-- 
				--Andrew Koenig
				  ark@europa.att.com