Rename multiple files by replacing a particular pattern in the filenames using a shell script

Question

Write a simple script that will automatically rename a number of files  As an example we want the file  001 jpg renamed to user defined string   001 jpg  ex  MyVacation20110725 001 jpg  The usage for this script is to get the digital camera photos to have file names that make some sense    I need to write a shell script for this  Can someone suggest how to begin

User · Answer

You can use rename utility to rename multiple files by a pattern  For example following command will prepend string MyVacation2011  to all the files with jpg extension    rename  s   MyVacation2011  g    jpg   or  rename  lt pattern gt   lt replacement gt   lt file-list gt

User · Answer

You can try this   for file in   jpg  do   mv  file  somestring   file   -7    done   You can see  parameter expansion  in man bash to understand the above better

User · Answer

An example to help you get off the ground  for f in   jpg  do mv  quot  f quot   quot   echo  quot  f quot    sed s IMG VACATION   quot   done  In this example  I am assuming that all your image files contain the string IMG and you want to replace IMG with VACATION  The shell automatically evaluates   jpg to all the matching files  The second argument of mv  the new name of the file  is the output of the sed command that replaces IMG with VACATION  If your filenames include whitespace pay careful attention to the  quot  f quot  notation  You need the double-quotes to preserve the whitespace

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Can t comment on Susam Pal s answer but if you re dealing with spaces  I d surround with quotes   for f in   jpg  do mv   f    echo  f   sed s     - g    done

User · Answer

for file in   jpg   do mv  file   file  IMG myVacation    done   Again assuming that all your image files have the string  IMG  and you want to replace  IMG  with  myVacation    With bash you can directly convert the string with parameter expansion   Example  if the file is IMG 327 jpg  the mv command will be executed as if you do mv IMG 327 jpg myVacation 327 jpg  And this will be done for each file found in the directory matching   jpg   IMG 001 jpg -  myVacation 001 jpg IMG 002 jpg -  myVacation 002 jpg IMG 1023 jpg -  myVacation 1023 jpg etcetera

User · Answer

find   -type f    sed -n  s       factory  py   amp   1service  py p     xargs -p -n 2 mv   eg will rename all files in the cwd with names ending in  factory py  to be replaced with names ending in  service py   explanation   1  in the sed cmd  the -n flag will suppress normal behavior of echoing input to output after the s    command is applied  and the p option on s    will force writing to output if a substitution is made  since a sub will only be made on match  sed will only have output for files ending in  factory py   2  in the s    replacement string  we use   amp    to interpolate the entire matching string  followed by a space character  into the replacement  because of this  it s vital that our RE matches the entire filename  after the space char  we use   1service py  to interpolate the string we gulped before  factory py   followed by  service py   replacing it  So for more complex transformations youll have to change the args to s     with an re still matching the entire filename   example output   foo factory py foo service py bar factory py bar service py   3  we use xargs with -n 2 to consume the output of sed 2 delimited strings at a time  passing these to mv  i also put the -p option in there so you can feel safe when running this   voila

User · Answer

this example  I am assuming that all your image files begin with  IMG  and you want to replace  IMG  with  VACATION   solution    first identified all jpg files and then replace keyword   find   -name   jpg  -exec bash -c  echo mv  0   0 IMG VACATION

User · Answer

Another option is   for i in  001 jpg do   echo  mv  i yourstring  i  001 jpg   done   remove echo after you have it right   Parameter substitution with   will keep only the last part  so you can change its name

[shell] Rename multiple files by replacing a particular pattern in the filenames using a shell script

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