Making image files into an ordered number sequence.

Say you have a bunch of files in a directory that need sensible filenames so that they can be fed into another program easily.

ie you want this.

0001.jpg

0002.jpg

0003.jpg

0004.jpg

from say this:

IMG_9998.JPG

IMG_9999.JPG

IMG_0001.JPG

IMG_0002.JPG

eg you camera has rolled over from IMG_9999.JPG to IMG_0001.JPG

(actually this is a bad example).

we need to tell find or ls below to order the files by creation date in this case.

just say you files looked like this.

IMG_3454.JPG

IMG_3455.JPG

IMG_3456.JPG

IMG_3457.JPG

(install gawk first)

find . -name '*.JPG' | gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv \"%s\" %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | bash

Careful.. find will work recursively ls may work better...

ls *.JPG | gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv \"%s\" %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | bash
work in progress....