Remove middle of filenames - bash

Question

I have a list of filenames like this in bash
UTSHoS10_Other_CAAGCC-TTAGGA_R_160418.R1.fq.gz
UTSHoS10_Other_CAAGCC-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz
UTSHoS11_Other_AGGCCT-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz
UTSHoS11_Other_AGGCCT-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz
UTSHoS12_Other_GGCAAG-TTAGGA_R_160418.R1.fq.gz
UTSHoS12_Other_GGCAAG-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz
And I want them to look like this
UTSHoS10_R1.fq.gz
UTSHoS10_R2.fq.gz
UTSHoS11_R1.fq.gz
UTSHoS11_R2.fq.gz
UTSHoS12_R1.fq.gz
UTSHoS12_R2.fq.gz
I do not have the perl rename command and sed 's/_Other*160418./_/' *.gz
is not doing anything. I've tried other rename scripts on here but either nothing occurs or my shell starts printing huge amounts of code to the console and freezes.
This post (Removing Middle of Filename) is similar however the answers given do not explain what specific parts of the command are doing so I could not apply it to my problem.

Answer 1

Parameter expansions in bash can perform string substitutions based on glob-like patterns, which allows for a more efficient solution than calling an extra external utility such as sed in each loop iteration:
for f in *.gz; do echo mv "$f" "${f/_Other_*-TTAGGA_R_160418./_}"; done
Remove the echo before mv to perform actual renaming.

Answer 2

You can do something like this in the directory which contains the files to be renamed:
for file_name in *.gz
do
new_file_name=$(sed 's/_[^.]*\./_/g' <<< "$file_name");
mv "$file_name" "$new_file_name";
done
The pattern (_[^.]*\.) starts matching from the FIRST _ till the FIRST . (both inclusive). [^.]* means 0 or more non-dot (or non-period) characters.
Example:
AMD$ ls
UTSHoS10_Other_CAAGCC-TTAGGA_R_160418.R1.fq.gz UTSHoS12_Other_GGCAAG-TTAGGA_R_160418.R1.fq.gz
UTSHoS10_Other_CAAGCC-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz UTSHoS12_Other_GGCAAG-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz
UTSHoS11_Other_AGGCCT-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz
AMD$ for file_name in *.gz
> do new_file_name=$(sed 's/_[^.]*\./_/g' <<< "$file_name")
> mv "$file_name" "$new_file_name"
> done
AMD$ ls
UTSHoS10_R1.fq.gz UTSHoS10_R2.fq.gz UTSHoS11_R2.fq.gz UTSHoS12_R1.fq.gz UTSHoS12_R2.fq.gz

Answer 3

Pure Bash, using substring operation and assuming that all file names have the same length:
for file in UTS*.gz; do
echo mv -i "$file" "${file:0:9}${file:38:8}"
done
Outputs:
mv -i UTSHoS10_Other_CAAGCC-TTAGGA_R_160418.R1.fq.gz UTSHoS10_R1.fq.gz
mv -i UTSHoS10_Other_CAAGCC-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz UTSHoS10_R2.fq.gz
mv -i UTSHoS11_Other_AGGCCT-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz UTSHoS11_R2.fq.gz
mv -i UTSHoS11_Other_AGGCCT-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz UTSHoS11_R2.fq.gz
mv -i UTSHoS12_Other_GGCAAG-TTAGGA_R_160418.R1.fq.gz UTSHoS12_R1.fq.gz
mv -i UTSHoS12_Other_GGCAAG-TTAGGA_R_160418.R2.fq.gz UTSHoS12_R2.fq.gz
Once verified, remove echo from the line inside the loop and run again.

Answer 4

Going with your sed command, this can work as a bash one-liner:
for name in UTSH*fq.gz; do newname=$(echo $name | sed 's/_Other.*160418\./_/'); echo mv $name $newname; done
Notes:
I've adjusted your sed command: it had an * without a preceeding . (sed takes a regular expression, not a globbing pattern). Similarly, the dot needs escaping.
To see if it works, without actually renaming the files, I've left the echo command in. Easy to remove just that to make it functional.
It doesn't have to be a one-liner, obviously. But sometimes, that makes editing and browsing your command-line history easier.