Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!chinet!les
From: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: simple question about mv
Message-ID: <7578@chinet.chi.il.us>
Date: 30 Jan 89 20:14:59 GMT
References: <18216@adm.BRL.MIL> <7558@chinet.chi.il.us> <940@philmds.UUCP>
Reply-To: les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell)
Organization: Chinet - Public Access Unix
Lines: 30

In article <940@philmds.UUCP> leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit) writes:
>|for i in *.flip
>|do
>|mv $i `sed -e 's/flip$/flop'`
>|done
>
>You probably meant here:
>
>mv $i `echo $i|sed -e 's/flip$/flop/'`
>
>As it stands, the sed command has no input (well, not what you expect
>it to have), and the sed expression contains a syntax error.

Oops, I even tested that and then mistyped it.  What I actually would
have done myself (assuming that it doesn't need to be done often enough
to be worth writing a shell script) is:
vi
:r !ls *.flip
:%s/.*/& &/ 
:%s/flip$/flop/
:%s/^/mv /
:w !sh
:q!

This lets me check my notoriously poor typing before anything actually
happens and each step can be undone with the <u> command if it doesn't
look right.  Now, how many people have a vi manual that documents the
difference between :w! file and :w !command ?

Les Mikesell