Batch mv or rename in bash script - append date as a suffix

Question

After much searching and trial and error, I\'m unable to do a batch mv or rename on a directory of files. What I\'d like to do is move or rename a

Answer 1

$ mv /directory/* /directory/*$(date (+ '%Y%m%d')

This does not work, because the * is expanded to a list of all files, so after the expansion the command will be something like:

mv /directory/file1 /directory/file2 /directory/file3 /directory/file1_date /directory/file1_date ...

So you have specified many destinations, but the syntax for mv allows only one single destination.

for f in *; do mv $ $f.$(date +'_%m%d%y'); done

Here you forgot the f after the $, that's why you get the error message.

for f in *; do mv $f $f.$(date +'%m%d%y'); done

I think this should work now, but don't forget to quote all the variables!

Finally:

for f in *; do mv "$f" "$f.$(date +'%m%d%y')"; done

Edit: When there are characters directly after a variable, it's good practice to use {} to make clear that they are not part of the variable name:

for f in *; do mv "$f" "${f}.$(date +'%m%d%y')"; done

Answer 2

The proper way to loop through files (and e.g., print their name) in the current directory is:

for file in *; do
    echo "$file"
done

How will you append the date? like so, of course:

for file in *; do
    echo "$file.$(date +%Y%m%d)"
done

And how are you going to do the move? like so, of course:

for file in *; do
    mv -nv -- "$file" "$file.$(date +%Y%m%d)"
done

I've added:

• -v so that mv be verbose (I like to know what's happening and it always impresses my little sister to watch all these lines flowing on the screen).
• -n so as to no overwrite an otherwise existing file. Safety first.
• -- just in case a file name starts with a hyphen: without --, mv would confuse with an option. Safety first.

If you just want to look through the files with extension .banana, replace the for with:

for file in *.banana; do

of for files that contain the word banana:

for file in *banana*; do

and so on.

Keep up with the bananas!