Renaming files with a list

[halogen2]

Would qmv (from renameutils package) help here? Especially if your list of desired filenames is in the same order that qmv displays the original filenames?

[Alxl]

with all due respect to what was said so far (and I hardly understand any), it took me less than a minute to do thsi:

171Culzean Castle 01, Scotland.jpeg

218Culzean Castle 02, Scotland.jpeg

503Culzean Castle 03, Scotland.jpeg

Desmond Castle, Ireland.jpeg

Dolbadarn Castle, Wales.jpeg
Donnington Castle, England.jpeg

Doonagore Tower 1, Ireland.jpeg

Doonagore Tower 2, Ireland.jpeg

Doonagore Tower 3, Ireland.jpeg
Doonagore Tower 4, Ireland.jpeg

And these are the new names:

171Culzean Castle 01, Scotland.jpeg

218Culzean Castle 02, Scotland.jpeg

503Culzean Castle 03, Scotland.jpeg


and it will take me another minute to copy the desired names and place them on the highlighted

"undesirable " names (one by one).

[The Cog]

Yes, sometimes just doing things by hand can be the quickest. But there are apparently "a lot" of files to rename. Judging by the list shown, I would guess one to two hundred.
And finding a solution to that was easily as interesting as doing another sudoku puzzle on a Sunday morning.

[TheFu]

Just saw that halogen2 made the suggestion below, but since I'd already typed it, perhaps from a different angle, it will add to understand the tool?

qmv will use any editor you like and has 2 columns, A, B.
A is the current filename.
B is the desired filename.
When the text file has all the new names you want in column B, quit/save and the rename will happen. Any temporary collisions are handled, but if 2 files get the same name, it will not rename any of them until that is fixed. Use whatever editor you like. With vim, you can easily merge the file with the new names into column B.

This will probably save a step, since there isn't really a pattern to the new filenames.

When it comes to scripting this stuff, filenames with spaces and other non-alphanumeric characters, often cause scripting issues. You'll need to be extremely cautious with how you parse any inputs.

I do both scripted renaming and use qmv, almost daily for many thousands of files since I started.

[etonry]

This does look promising. I'm going on vacation next week and may not have time to try it before I leave. I have used computers for more than forty years, all sorts, many systems. I'm not afraid of trying to do stuff in the terminal, but I'm not overly knowledgeable about some of the commands and how to do things. I tend to learn what I need, when I need. This particular need has never come up before.

The "logic" of what I want to do is simple. I like pictures of castles. I have a large collection of such pictures. The list is alphabetical of course. What I want to do it use these pictures for a slide show, without getting twenty pictures of the same castle before seeing the next one. That's what the numbers are for, to re-organize the pictures.

[etonry]

This looks good, too. I think. As I said above, I'm not well-versed in command line work. I don't actually understand anything you wrote, but I'll try it. Probably after my vacation. Thank you for your help.

[dragonfly41]

The "logic" of what I want to do is simple. I like pictures of castles. I have a large collection of such pictures. The list is alphabetical of course. What I want to do it use these pictures for a slide show, without getting twenty pictures of the same castle before seeing the next one. That's what the numbers are for, to re-organize the pictures.

Now that you have specified requirements in full, one suggestion is that you use Zettlr as your editor (markdown). You can embed links to castles wthin your markdown code. that is each slide. You can navigate in two directions. Left <-> Right arrows, and in fragments up and down. So a slide might relate to a castle but "fragments" (north south navigation) can hold different scenes with child notes. A two directional slide show. Embedding images is explained in Zettlr manual.

The powerful feature in Zettlr which migh help you is export to Reveal.js. This gives the slideshow you want.

[TheFu]

I do something similar with my photos, but rather than trying to organize them too much with filenames, I keep them in order by leaving the numeric sequence alone. I will add metadata to the EXIF fields with different locations and keywords to help find them later.

I have very few rules about photo organization. #1 is that I'll never trust any external tool with extra information. I've been burned. I want the filename and the embedded metadata to contain everything. That metadata can be searched later for keywords, so if any specific location is important, I'll use the "Sub-Location" EXIF field for that. I also try to have the GPS coordinates correct as possible. For example,

165-Hotel_Simple_Patagonia_Views-best.jpg
Create Date                     : 2017:11:25 16:52:34
City                            : Puerto Nagales
Sub-location                    : Condor Views
Province-State                  : 
Country-Primary Location Name   : Chile

That specific image doesn't have GPS, since I wasn't using a GPS to track at the time, but the filename has the location, which is at GPS: -51.695356, -72.527458
The Plus Code is : 8F3F+W5 Natales, Chile

Anyway, there are map tools that can show all the images with embedded GPS coordinates that are nearby. I use this with Nextcloud Maps/Photos to see locations on a map, then click on a specific icon to see the full photo and all EXIF for it.

[Holger_Gehrke]

Most slide show programs can work of a list of files to show. For example 'feh' has an option '-f ' which will take a file that contains a list of image files one file per line which it will then proceed to show. No need to do any renaming. Even better, you can start feh with an empty or non existing playlist but give it the images that are candidates for the playlist on the command line (e.g. 'feh -f emptyplaylist.txt *.jpg') and then go through the slideshow and just hit the 'del'-key on any image you don't want in the slide show and it will automatically save the list when you exit.

Holger

[etonry]

Thank you very much for your suggestion. It worked almost perfectly. The first time I tried it, it failed because the command script put an extra zero in the numbers of the original files, so it couldn't find them. I fixed that. When I ran it again, it changed almost all the filenames. I still have about a dozen I'll have to do manually, but that's a huge improvement. Thanks again.