Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ukma!rutgers!cmcl2!adm!smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: simple question about mv
Message-ID: <9529@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 28 Jan 89 05:13:12 GMT
References: <18216@adm.BRL.MIL>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <18216@adm.BRL.MIL> DEG41560@ua1vm.ua.edu (Rob Smith) writes:
>    mv *.flip *.flop

Since filename expansion is performed by the shell, not by the "mv"
utility, for the shell to directly do what you're attempting it would
have to know the semantics of "mv".  That is contrary to the design
principles of the UNIX shell.

If you have a "basename" utility, try something like:
	for i in *.flip
	do	mv $i `basename $i .flip`.flop
	done
Notice how much more general this approach is.