Renaming File Extensions

[bdan44]

i am a total n00b at perl. i just started learning yesterday. I wanted to make a script to rename extentions. this is what i've come up with. i can't figure out why it doesn't work. any help would be appreciated.

#!/usr/bin/perl

print "What ending would you like to change?";
$ending = <STDIN>;
chomp($ending);

print "What would you like to change it to?";
$new_ending = <STDIN>;
chomp($new_ending);

print "What is the directory you would like to change this in?";
$directory = <STDIN>;
chomp($directory);

print $ending, " ", $new_ending, " ", $directory, "\n";

chdir $directory;
@list = `ls *.$ending`;

foreach (@list) {
	chop;
	rename (".$ending", ".$new_ending") || die "Cannot delete $ending";
};
print "\n";

[savanm]

Hi,

use Cwd;

$path=getcwd();
$path=~s/\\/\//sg;
print $path;

opendir(DIR,$path) || die("Cannot open thedirectry");
@storage = grep(/\.xml/,readdir(DIR));
close(DIR);

foreach $fil(@storage) {
	submain($path."\/".$fil);
}

sub submain() {
	$xml = shift;
	$txt = $xml;
	$txt=~s/\.xml/\.txt/sgi;
	local $/;
	open(FILE,$xml);
	while(<FILE>) {
		$temp=$_;
	}
	open(OUT,">$txt");
	print OUT $temp;
	close(OUT);

}

Try this this is used to change the extension of the file .xml to .txt

then tell ur need briefly

[KevinADC]

You need the full filename:

rename ("fullname.$ending", "fullname.$new_ending") || die "Cannot delete $ending";

also, probably safer to use "chomp" instead of "chop" athough it may not matter in this case. But chomp is really the correct function for removing the record seperator, chop blindy removes the last charater on the end of the string regardless of what the character is.

[bdan44]

hi,
what I want the code to do is prompt the user for the extensions they would like to change (if they wanted to change from .mpg to .mpeg they could or from .jpg to .jpeg they could, all with the same script).

[miller]

Hi bdan44,

As Kevin pointed out, you need to give an explicit file name to the rename function, not just the extension.

Also, your rename won't work as you desire unless you extract the non extention part of the file. You can use either a regex, substr, or a core library for that. I'd suggest a core library.

Here is your code fixed and cleaned up by adding "use strict;".

#!/usr/bin/perl

use File::Basename qw(fileparse);

use strict;

print "What ending would you like to change?";
my $old_ending = <STDIN>;
chomp($old_ending);

print "What would you like to change it to?";
my $new_ending = <STDIN>;
chomp($new_ending);

print "What is the directory you would like to change this in?";
my $directory = <STDIN>;
chomp($directory);

print $ending, " ", $new_ending, " ", $directory, "\n";

chdir $directory;
my @list = `ls *.$ending`;

foreach (@list) {
	chomp;
	my $name = fileparse($_, ".$old_ending");
	rename("$name.$old_ending", "$name.$new_ending") or die "Cannot delete $ending";
};
print "\n";

(Not tested)

- Miller