Quoting Haines Brown (hai...@histomat.net): > Andrew, thanks for your addition to this interesting > thread. Unfortunately the implication is that no simple command will > copy a file to another directory and avoid clash by sequentially > numbering the copies. It will be simpler just to live with the "~" > signs.
If the "sequentialness" (where you wouldn't delete foo.~3~ even if it was identical to foo.~2~ and foo.~4~) is not important, and filenamelength is not critical, you could consider adding a more "meaningful" suffix to the filename. For example, this command adds the file's own modification timestamp. for j in *[0-9]~ ; do mv -i "$j" "$j$(ls -bog1 --time-style=+'"-%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"' "$j" | cut -f 2 -d '"')" ; done As written here, the ~N~ is left in the middle of the filename, but could be removed with bash's ${parameter%word} expansion. A side-effect (as long as ~N~ is removed) is that an unmodified backup will provoke a name collision, which mv -i will then show you. The quoting deals with spaces in filenames, but I haven't bothered with really wacky characters (even though I put -b in the ls). The one-step method is, of course, to forget --backup altogether: for j in file ; do cp -ip "$j" ".../destination/$j$(ls -bog1 --time-style=+'"-%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"' "$j" | cut -f 2 -d '"')" ; done Example with cp (and using bash completion to type the filename!): $ ls -og 27* -rw-r----- 1 148033383 Jan 17 2014 27c3 - Desktop on the Linux... (and BSD, of course) - Wolfgang Draxinger (+ Lennart Poettering)-ZTdUmlGxVo0.mp4 $ for j in 27c3\ -\ Desktop\ on\ the\ Linux...\ \(and\ BSD\,\ of\ course\)\ -\ Wolfgang\ Draxinger\ \(+\ Lennart\ Poettering\)-ZTdUmlGxVo0.mp4 ; do cp -ip "$j" "/tmp/$j$(ls -bog1 --time-style=+'"-%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"' "$j" | cut -f 2 -d '"')" ; done $ ls -og /tmp/27* -rw-r----- 1 148033383 Jan 17 2014 27c3 - Desktop on the Linux... (and BSD, of course) - Wolfgang Draxinger (+ Lennart Poettering)-ZTdUmlGxVo0.mp4-20140117-160615 Cheers, David. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150719190253.GA8739@alum