simple question about mv

Eirik Fuller eirik at lurch.stanford.edu
Mon Jan 30 17:09:55 AEST 1989


In article <1989Jan28.203519.3521 at lsuc.uucp>, dave at lsuc (David Sherman) writes:
)  ...
) $ ls *.flip > junk
) $ ed junk
) g/.flip/s///
) g/.*/s//mv &.flip &.flop/p
) w
) q
) $ sh -x junk
) 
)  ...
) 
) The point is that you can see what the mv commands look like,
) in the editor, before you shovel them at the shell.  It's reassuring.
) Note also the sh -x, which lets you watch the commands as they run.
) ...

I agree with the general strategy of constructing commands on the fly
and, when they look right, feeding them to a shell.  However, I don't
see the need for a junk file; what's wrong with pipes?

I would have done this as

ls *.flip | sed -e 's/\(.*\)flip$/mv \1flip \1flop/'

When I'm happy with the output (after the usual half-dozen
iterations), I say (in csh)

!! | sh -x



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