base_16 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I wrote the following code to go through a directory of files and rename them.
The files are of the format:
A-1024-01-AM
I want to take the `-AM' off of the file.
Why doesn't this code work?
Any help would be appreciated.
$DIR=".";
opendir CONCEPT, $DIR || die "no such dir";
while ($TEMP = readdir(CONCEPT))
{
    $TEMP1 = $TEMP;
    if ($TEMP1 =~ /(A-[0-9]+-[0-9]+)/) { 
        if (rename $TEMP, $TEMP1)
             { print $TEMP1; }
        }
}

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Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: renaming files...
by lhoward (Vicar) on Aug 08, 2000 at 22:04 UTC
    ...because in your inner loop $TEMP and $TEMP1 have the same value.

    You may want to try it like this: 

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my $dir=".";
opendir CONCEPT, $dir || die "no such dir";
while (my $temp = readdir(CONCEPT)){
  if ($temp =~ /^(A-\d+-\d+)/) { 
    rename $temp, $1 or die "error $! renaming $temp to $1";
  }
}
closedir CONCEPT;

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Re: renaming files...
by plaid (Chaplain) on Aug 08, 2000 at 22:06 UTC
    On the line 
    if ($TEMP1 =~ /(A-[0-9]+-[0-9]+)/) {

    [download]
    You want to take the output of the pattern match. $TEMP1 isn't being altered at all, it's just being matched against. The result of the pattern match is left in $1. Try this: 
    $DIR=".";
opendir CONCEPT, $DIR || die "no such dir";
while ($TEMP = readdir(CONCEPT))
{
    if ($TEMP =~ /(A-[0-9]+-[0-9]+)/) { 
        if (rename $TEMP, $1)
            { print $1; }
    }
}

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    The code was editted as little as possible. Any stricting, -w'ing, and error checking is left as an excercise to the reader.
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RE: renaming files...
by steveAZ98 (Monk) on Aug 09, 2000 at 00:59 UTC
    I'm not sure that you can use this but instead of writing your own script you could use rename like follows. 
    rename 's/-AM$//' *

    [download]
    In the directory that you need to rename the files. I believe rename is part of perl. HTH
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Re: renaming files...
by ar0n (Priest) on Aug 08, 2000 at 22:01 UTC
    wrong advice, don't listen to me. nothing to see here, move along folks.

    You need to escape the '-' character, because it's interpreted as a range.

    update: that was a little short, try this: $TEMP1 =~ /^(A\-[0-9]+\-[0-9]+)\-AM/ notice the '\' characters. And the '^' so it'll only match files beginning with "A-123-123-AM"

    update numero deux: woops, guess i was wrong. need to get handle on rexeps, sorry. (and actually read posts)

    -- ar0n | Just Another Perl Joe

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      Actually, you don't need to quote the '-'s, they aren't making a range. See other follow-ups for why the code isn't working.

              - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")
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