How to rename/move all files with a certain extension?

Question

I'm learning tcl (expect) and now I came to an interesting issue. I need a command to move/rename a bunch of files with extension .status. I tried these:

spawn /bin/mv *.status some_dir
exec /bin/mv *.status some_dir

Of course, that did not work. I googled a bit and found something about glob, but it doesn't seem to work the way I want it to. If I do:

exec /bin/mv [glob *.status] somedir

mv complains that '1.status 2.status 3.status...etc.' is not a valid file. It as if the whole list of files is concatenated in a single string instead of being treated separately.

Trying to find more information via google lead me to a lot of broken and outdated links, so I'm hoping beside solving this problem, could you point me to some good online resource for tcl/expect basics and common pitfalls.

Update: Only solutions that use standard tcl and standard tools in /bin will be accepted.

Answer 1

The mmv command may be what you are looking for. You may need to install it first, though. It's included in the Debian system (www.debian.org), if you can't find it elsewhere.

Answer 2

$ ls -1
1.status
2.status
rename.tclsh*
some_dir/
two words.status

$ cat rename.tclsh
#!/usr/local/bin/tclsh

eval exec /bin/mv [glob *.status] some_dir

$ ./rename.tclsh

$ ls -1
rename.tclsh*
some_dir/

$ ls -1 some_dir/
1.status
2.status
two words.status

Answer 3

This solution works with files with names containing spaces, when there is a lot of files etc:

exec find -maxdepth 1 -name *.status -print0 | xargs -0 mv -t some_dir

But it needs find and xargs which are most often in /usr/bin, not /bin.

Answer 4

proc move_to_dir {filenames dirname} {
    foreach filename $filenames {
        file rename $filename [file join $dirname [file tail $filename]]
    }
}
# Example:
move_to_dir [glob -nocomplain *.status] ~/foo/bar/

Answer 5

As a safety feature when using complex 'find' commands and potentially deleting data I stick an 'echo' in front of the command and capture it to a file.
I can then check the commands listed in the file before using 'source' to run it.

It's also a way of handling those occasional edge case files manually.

Answer 6

Randy's answer is short and correct but uses an exec without need. Joseph's answer is very robust but a bit long.

For a short and idiomatic answer I would use (requires Tcl 8.5):

file rename {*}[glob *.status] some_dir