[ALUG] Problem with 'find' and 'basename'

8 Jun 2007

      I'm trying to change the suffix of all files in a directory hierarchy.

Trying to diagnose my problem I have run the following command:-

    find info -name '*.txt' -exec echo `basename {} .txt` \;

A section of the output from the above command is as follows:-

    info/motorbikes/zzr1200service.txt
    info/motorbikes/luggage.txt
    info/motorbikes/index.txt
    info/motorbikes/restindex.txt
    info/motorbikes/zzr1200info.txt
    info/motorbikes/lifts.txt
    info/index.txt
    info/test/test1.txt
    info/test/test2.txt
    info/test/test3.txt

So the `basename {} .txt` is doing nothing at all, why?

Looking further it seems as if the `` inside the find are causing the
problem as:-

    find info -name '*.txt' -exec basename {} .txt \;

produces the expected output:-

    zzr1200service
    luggage
    index
    restindex
    zzr1200info
    lifts
    index
    test1
    test2
    test3

The actual command I want to execute is:-

    find info -name '*.txt' -exec mv `basename {} .txt`.rst \;

to change the .txt suffix to .rst.

Any ideas how to do it?

-- 
Chris Green