Unix: Files starting with a dash, -
- by Svish
Ok, I have a bunch of files starting with a dash, -. Which is not so good... and I want to rename them. In my particular case I would just like to put a character in front of them.
I found the following line that should work, but because of it dash it doesn't:
for file in -N*.ext; do mv $file x$file; done
If I put an echo in front of the mv I get a bunch of
mv -N1.ext x-f1.ext
mv -N2.ext x-f2.ext
Which is correct, except of course it will think the first filename is options. So when I remove the echo and run it I just get a bunch of
mv: illegal option -- N
I have tried to change it to
for file in -N*.ext; do mv "$file" "x$file"; done
but the quotes are just ignored it seems. Tried to use single quotes, but then the variable wasn't expanded... What do I do here?
Update: I have now also tried to quote the quotes. Like this:
for file in -N*.ext; do mv '"'$file'"' '"'x$file'"'; done
And when I echo that, it looks correct, but when I actually run it I just get
mv: rename "-N1.ext" to "x-n1.ext":: No such file or directory
I have just no clue how to do this now... sigh
