lowercasing & converting files to text an empty *.txt file appeared

Question

I check if there's some files of a certain kind inside a folder to lowercase the extension and then extract the content this way:

existDoc=""$(ls | grep .DOC | wc -l)

if [ $existDoc -gt 0 ]; then
    for file in *.DOC
    do
        mv $file $(basename "$file" .DOC)".doc"
    done
fi

and then conversion

for word in *.doc
    do
        text_doc=""$(basename "$word" .doc)
        sudo catdoc $word > $text_doc".txt"
    done

The issue is that a new empty file is created named "*.doc.txt" with no apparent reason.

you used $text_doc and $textdoc in your question. is this a typo? — michas, Jul 29 '16 at 15:01
You can rename the files with `rename "s/.DOC$/.doc/" *`. Use `rename -n "s/.DOC$/.doc/" *` to check the result before. — Marco, Jul 29 '16 at 16:01
you could simplify your "for file in *.DOC" segment by just removing the "if" from the outside -- if there are no *.DOC files, the loop won't execute anything. Just like your second segment does with *.doc files. — Jeff Schaller, Jul 29 '16 at 16:42
since you've tagged bash, see also: `mv "$file" "${file,,}"` — Jeff Schaller, Jul 29 '16 at 16:44
ikkachu , sometimes "*.doc" sometimes, "*.doc.txt" , so both appeared depending on the original files — jomaweb, Jul 31 '16 at 11:47
Can't use "rename" Marco because when I tried it the docX files were renamed to doc and catdoc crashed with docX files . Maybe my fault. Will try with your code snippet — jomaweb, Jul 31 '16 at 11:49

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

5

A couple things:

If I understand you correctly, you would like to lowercase the extension of all *.DOC filenames and use catdoc to create text files of them.

shopt -s nullglob
for doc in ./*.DOC; do
    new_doc="${doc%.DOC}.doc"
    txt_doc="${doc%.DOC}.txt"

    catdoc "$doc" >"$txt_doc"
    mv "$doc" "$new_doc"
done

Or even shorter:

shopt -s nullglob
for doc in ./*.DOC; do
    catdoc "$doc" >"${doc%.DOC}.txt"
    mv "$doc" "${doc%.DOC}.doc"
done

The ${doc%.DOC} is using the ${parameter%word} parameter expansion of bash (or any POSIX shell) to remove the .DOC suffix from the filename in $doc.
Setting the nullglob shell option will ensure that nothing is matched by *.DOC if there are no files with the .DOC suffix. If not set, I would get the string *.DOC in $doc if there were no .DOC files.
Use a ./ prefix in ./*.DOC to avoid problems with filenames starting with -.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Jul 29 '16 at 15:12

Kusalananda

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sudo is used because the destination folder is owned by root. Otherwise the files would not be written Kusalananda – jomaweb Jul 31 '16 at 11:56
@jomaweb In that case you either need `sudo` for the `mv` as well, or to run the whole thing with `sudo` in a script. I would personally do all the processing first, and then move the files in place with `sudo mv`. – Kusalananda Jul 31 '16 at 11:59
using for doc in *.DOC gives me an error when no DOC file is present – jomaweb Jul 31 '16 at 12:03
@jomaweb This is probably because you did not set `shopt -s nullglob`? – Kusalananda Jul 31 '16 at 12:36

lowercasing & converting files to text an empty *.txt file appeared

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