c shell script: find directory and rename the output of find - shell

Question

i am still new in this shell script. I have a task that given to me which i have difficulty to execute it.
The task is i have a lot of directory which is based on ddmmyy.
03Mar2014 08Aug2013 11Jan2015 16Jan2014 22Feb2014 26Mar2014
03Nov2013 08Jan2014 11Jul2013 16Jul2013 22Jul2013 26Oct2014
03Oct2013 08Jan2015 11Nov2014 16May2014 22Mar2014 26Sep2013
The task is to make the directory to mmyy.
So far, my code is
foreach file(`find . -type d | awk -F/ 'NF == 3'`)
echo $file
set newmove = `echo $file | cut -c 1-2,5-`
echo $newmove
mv $file $newmove
output:
for find . -type d | awk -F/ 'NF == 3':
./24Jan2015/W51A
`echo $file | cut -c 1-2,5-`
./Jan2015/W51A
mv $file $newmove
mv: cannot rename ./24Jan2015/W51A to ./Jan2015/W51A: No such file or directory
but the script didnt work.
Do you guys have any idea how to do this?

Answer 1

First of all, the issue is you're renaming the file but actually tryng to rename the directory, hence the error.
As I understood the idea is to rename the folders in the current working directory to the desired format and by this actually merge the content of the folders from the same mmYYYY format to the new one (since 11Jan2015 and 16Jan2014 will be renamed both to Jan2014)
you can try this:
foreach dir ( `ls` )
set newdir = `echo $dir| cut -c 3-`
mkdir -p $newdir
mv -f $dir/* $newdir
rmdir $dir
end
-p will create the folder and will do nothing if the folder already exists.
Some assumptions:
The folders are at the same place which is pwd
There are always two leading digits in date
You want to merge the folders content of the same mmYYYY format
The files with the same name in different folders will be overwritten
There are only folders in pwd (add check if it's not the case)
In case these folders are in different places (which is not the case according to your output: ./24Jan2015 ) and collision is not an issue - the code should be changed to :
Use find
Create the new folder with the correct path
No merge and overwrite will occur, so 1,3,4 and 5 are not relevant.
UPDATE:
After additional input - if I understand correctly your find is looking only for the folders of depth 3. I can't say why but you can achieve the same much faster with
find . -type d -mindepth=2 -maxdepth=2
The output is the list of the folders that have subfolders.
Then you need to get the second folder's name (assuming it will always be of the expected format).
set olddir = `echo $file| cut -f 1-3 -d '/'`
set newdir = `echo $olddir | cut -c 1-2,5-`
and finally
foreach file(`find . -type d -mindepth=2 -maxdepth=2`)
set olddir = `echo $file| cut -f 1-3 -d '/'`
set newdir = `echo $olddir | cut -c 1-2,5-`
mkdir -p $newdir
mv -f $file $newdir
end
This will also handle the case if two folders were found under the same path.
UPDATE 2:
Since the script will run on Unix - the following updates should be made:
Original find was returned since unix find lacks the mindepth/maxdepth options
We should try to remove the olddir to cleanup the empty folders - it will fail if the folder is not empty but the script should continue to run
foreach file(`find . -type d | awk -F/ 'NF == 3'`)
set olddir = `echo $file| cut -f 1-2 -d '/'`
set newdir = `echo $olddir | cut -c 1-2,5-`
set dir_name=`basename "$file"`
if ( -d "$newdir/$dir_name" ) then
mv -f $file/* $newdir/$dir_name/
else
mkdir -p $newdir
mv -f $file $newdir
endif
rmdir $olddir
end

Answer 2

I really think c shell is the wrong tool for just about anything that involves programming. That said, this looks like it would do what you want with only a little help from an external tool:
#!/bin/csh
foreach file ([0-9][0-9][A-Z][a-z][a-z][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])
set new = `echo $file:q | cut -c 3-`
if ( -d "$new" ) then
echo "skipping $file because $new already exists"
continue
endif
mv -v "$file" "$new"
end
Note the glob that matches your list of directories to rename. This script isn't bothering to confirm whether the matched files ARE in fact directories, so if there's the possibility they might not be, you should account for that somehow.
Note that we are using a back-quoted expression to use an external tool, cut to grab a substring from each directory name. We use this (as you did in your question) because CSH IS NOT A PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE, and has no string processing capabilities of its own.
The if statement within the loop will skip any directory whose target already exists. So for example, if you were to go through the top row of your input in your question, 26Mar2014 would be converted to Mar2014, which already exists due to 03Mar2014. Since you haven't specified how this should be handled, this script skips that condition.