File Copy – How to Rename Files While Copying

This ought to work:

sh <(sed -r 's/^\s*(.*)\s+([0-9\.]+)\s+([0-9A-Z]{8}\.dat)\s*$/mv -iv \3 "\2 \1"/' files)

... where files is the name of your source file.

What this does is pass the result of the sed command to a new instance of sh (the shell), using process substitution. The output of the sed command is:

mv -iv 000011F4.dat "0.1 New File Name.xlsx"
mv -iv 000011F5.dat "0.2 New File Name.xlsx"
mv -iv 000011F6.dat "0.3 New File Name.xlsx"
mv -iv 000011F7.dat "0.4 New File Name.xlsx"
mv -iv 000011F8.dat "0.5 New File Name.xlsx"
mv -iv 000011F9.dat "0.6 New File Name.xlsx"

Taking the sed command apart, it searches for a pattern:

• ^ - the beginning of the line
• \s* - any whitespace at the start
• (.*) - any characters (the parentheses store the result to \1)
• \s+ - at least one whitespace character
• ([0-9\.]+) - at least one of 0-9 and . (stored to \2)
• \s+ - at least one whitespace character
• ([0-9A-Z]{8}\.dat) - 8 characters in 0-9 or A-Z, followed by .dat (stored to \3)
• \s* - any whitespace at the end
• $ - the end of the line

... and replaces it with mv -iv \3 "\2 \1", where \1 to \3 are the previously stored values. You can use something other than a space between the version number and the rest of the filename, if you like.

Here's the result:

$ ls -l
total 60
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 000011F4.dat
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 000011F5.dat
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 000011F6.dat
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 000011F7.dat
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 000011F8.dat
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 000011F9.dat
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z 222 Aug  8 13:47 files
$ sh <(sed -r 's/^\s*(.*)\s+([0-9\.]+)\s+([0-9A-Z]{8}\.dat)\s*$/mv -iv \3 "\2 \1"/' files)
`000011F4.dat' -> `0.1 New File Name.xlsx'
`000011F5.dat' -> `0.2 New File Name.xlsx'
`000011F6.dat' -> `0.3 New File Name.xlsx'
`000011F7.dat' -> `0.4 New File Name.xlsx'
`000011F8.dat' -> `0.5 New File Name.xlsx'
`000011F9.dat' -> `0.6 New File Name.xlsx'
$ ls -l
total 60
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 0.1 New File Name.xlsx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 0.2 New File Name.xlsx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 0.3 New File Name.xlsx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 0.4 New File Name.xlsx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 0.5 New File Name.xlsx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z   0 Aug  8 14:15 0.6 New File Name.xlsx
-rw-rw-r-- 1 z z 222 Aug  8 13:47 files

In my experience fdupes can be inconsistent in the order that it outputs files (I have had my own problems using the --delete option). This should be fairly robust as it doesn't require the files to be in a specific order (as as long as there are always two dupes in different folders):

# note no trailing slash
source_dir=/home/articles
target_dir=/external/articles

fdupes "$target_dir" "$source_dir" |
  while IFS= read file; do
    case "$file" in
      "$source_dir/"*)
         source=${file##*/}
         ;;
      "$target_dir/"*)
         target=$file
         ;;
      '')
         if [ "$source" ] && [ "$target" ]; then
           echo mv -i "$target" "$target_dir/$source"
         fi
         unset source target
         ;;
    esac
  done

This will just print out the mv commands, remove the echo when you are sure you have what you want. Also the -i option for mv will prompt you if it is going to overwrite anything.