MacOS – How to rename an ordered list of files with an ordered list of file names

The exact sorting order used by Finder probably depends on the locale, but scripting languages like Ruby and Python have libraries for sorting strings naturally.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -rubygems -KU

require 'natural_sort' # gem install naturalsort

input = "name-II-1
name-6
name-2
name-19".lines
# input = Dir["#{ENV['HOME']}/Documents/*"]

puts NaturalSort.naturalsort(input)

Open terminal and use cd to make the directory of *.nef files your current directory. Let's assume you have this structure:

mydir/jpegdir mydir/nefdir

So cd into mydir/nefdir

Then:

mkdir newdir
for file in *.nef; do 
    root=${$file%.nef}; 
    jpeg=${root}.jpg; 
    mv ../jpegdir/${jpeg} ./newdir/
done

example below. Note here that I put "echo" in front of the mv command. You want to omit that, but I often use it when I'm checking that a script is doing what I expect before executing it. You also don't say what you want to do with the files, but moving them to a new folder allows you to select them, and you can always move them all back. I also shortened my tmp variable names.

$ ls -R
total 0
drwxrwxr-x  4 tim  staff  136 Jun 13 08:02 .
drwx------  9 tim  staff  306 Jun 13 08:02 ..
drwxrwxr-x  8 tim  staff  272 Jun 13 08:03 jpegdir
drwxrwxr-x  5 tim  staff  170 Jun 13 08:03 nefdir

./jpegdir:
total 0
drwxrwxr-x  8 tim  staff  272 Jun 13 08:03 .
drwxrwxr-x  4 tim  staff  136 Jun 13 08:02 ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo1.jpeg
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo2.jpeg
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo3.jpeg
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo4.jpeg
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo5.jpeg
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo6.jpeg

./nefdir:
total 0
drwxrwxr-x  5 tim  staff  170 Jun 13 08:03 .
drwxrwxr-x  4 tim  staff  136 Jun 13 08:02 ..
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo2.nef
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo3.nef
-rw-rw-r--  1 tim  staff    0 Jun 13 08:03 foo5.nef

$ cd nefdir/
$ mkdir newdir/

$ for f in *.nef; do g=${f%.nef}; h=$g.jpeg; echo mv ../jpegdir/$h ./newdir; done
mv ../jpegdir/foo2.jpeg ./newdir
mv ../jpegdir/foo3.jpeg ./newdir
mv ../jpegdir/foo5.jpeg ./newdir