Exiv2

Peter

The examples in our man page are:

exiv2 rename img_1234.jpg
Renames img_1234.jpg (taken on 13−Nov−05 at 22:58:31) to 20051113_225831.jpg

exiv2 −r’:basename:_%Y%m’ rename img_1234.jpg
Renames img_1234.jpg to img_1234_200511.jpg

In bash (on MacOS-X or Cygwin or Linux) when I want to operate on a lot of files, I like to use a for and find. Something like this. For a single directory:

for i in *.jpg; do ls -alt $i; done

for i in $(find . -name "*.jpg"); do ls -alt $i; done

find . -name "*.jpg" | args ls -alt 

find . -print0 -name "*.jpg" | xargs -0 ls -alt 

find . -name "*.jpg" | xargs echo ls -alt

#include <stdio.h>
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    int i = 1 ;
    while ( i < argc ) {
        printf("%-2d: %s\n",i,argv[i]) ;
        i++;
    }
    return 0 ;
}
784 rmills@rmillsmbp:~/temp/forPeter $

790 rmills@rmillsmbp:~/temp/forPeter $ ls -alt
total 16
drwxr-xr-x+   4 rmills  staff   136  7 May 17:23 .
-rw-r--r--+   1 rmills  staff     4  7 May 17:23 I am a different file.jpg
-rw-r--r--+   1 rmills  staff     4  7 May 17:22 I am a file.jpg
drwxr-xr-x+ 105 rmills  staff  3570  7 May 17:22 ..
791 rmills@rmillsmbp:~/temp/forPeter $ find . -type f -print0 -name "*.jpg" | xargs -0 args ls -alt
1 : ls
2 : -alt
3 : ./I am a different file.jpg
4 : ./I am a file.jpg
792 rmills@rmillsmbp:~/temp/forPeter $ 

Thanks. I'm guessing that exiv2 cannot specify a directory.

I first tried entering the directory and then running the exiv command and that works fine if I execute my shell script manually. But when I put it into cron, it doesn't execute.

The Temp folder below holds the images I am processing the file renames on. I want to have exiv2 rename all the JPGs in that folder.

#!/bin/sh
cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD\ 2/Pictures/Temp
exiv2 r'%Y%m-%d_%H%M_:basename:' rename $(ls)

After some research, I believe I cannot enter a directory "cd" like this and run the exiv2 command because it doesn't know it's in that directory (from cron at least). I can't figure out how to tell it to run the exiv2 command inside this Temp directory.

I always sigh when I have to work with cron. I know it always takes time to get things to work correctly with cron. I think cron might use a different user account and it might not be running bash! And if it's running bash, it might be using shell options to disable globing and other horrors. Some coffee and a little determination are needed to tame the beast.

The syntax of exiv2 is:

exiv2 [options] [action] file ...

Incidentally, I believe that Apple prefer user to use launch services to run occasional jobs or daemons. However I run MacOS-X and have a couple of cron scripts that have been running for years without trouble.

Yup, I believe I lose many hairs dealing with cron. Yes, you are right, Apple wants us to use launchd, I forgot that. I'll look into doing that instead, maybe I'll have better luck.

Besides that, exiv2 is exactly what I was looking for and it seems to do the job perfect for me! Thanks.

Whoops, our messages have overlapped. Well, you're not using bash. build and install exiv2 and he should be on your path. Try this (and the coffee):

#!/bin/bash
find '/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD\ 2/Pictures/Temp' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 exiv2 r'%Y%m-%d_%H%M_:basename:' rename 

I got it working! Cron didn't know where exiv2 was located, so I had to give it the full path:

cd ~/Pictures/Temp
/usr/local/Cellar/exiv2/0.24/bin/exiv2 r'%Y%m-%d_%H%M_:basename:' rename $(ls)