Rename all files in a folder with a prefix in a single command

Question

Rename all the files within a folder with prefix  Unix     Suppose a folder has two files   a txt b pdf   then they both should be renamed from a single command to   Unix a txt Unix b pdf

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find -execdir rename This renames files and directories with a regular expression affecting only basenames  So for a prefix you could do  PATH  usr bin find   -depth -execdir rename  s   Unix             or to affect files only  PATH  usr bin find   -type f -execdir rename  s   Unix             -execdir first cds into the directory before executing only on the basename  I have explained it in more detail at  Find multiple files and rename them in Linux

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Also works for items with spaces and ignores directories  for f in    do    -f   f      amp  amp  mv   f   unix  f   done

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Try the rename command in the folder with the files   rename  s   Unix        The argument of rename  sed s command  indicates to replace the regex   with Unix   The caret     is a special character that means start of the line

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Situation   We have certificate key certificate crt inside  user ssl   We want to rename anything that starts with certificate to certificate OLD  We are now located inside  user  First  you do a dry run with -n   rename -n  s certificate certificate old     ssl    Which returns   rename   ssl certificate crt    ssl certificate OLD crt   rename   ssl certificate key    ssl certificate OLD key    Your files will be unchanged this is just a test run   Solution   When your happy with the result of the test run it for real   rename  s certificate certificate OLD     ssl    What it means    rename  s  SOMETHING   SOMETING ELSE   PATH FILES  Tip   If you are already on the path run it like this   rename  s certificate certificate OLD      Or if you want to do this in any sub-directory starting with ss do   rename -n  s certificat certificate old     ss     You can also do   rename -n  s certi  certificate old     ss     Which renames anything starting with certi in any sub-directory starting with ss   The sky is the limit   Play around with regex and ALWAYS test this BEFORE with -n   WATCH OUT THIS WILL EVEN RENAME FOLDER NAMES THAT MATCH  Better cd into the directory and do it there   USE AT OWN RISK

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I recently faced this same situation and found an easier inbuilt solution  I am sharing it here so that it might help other people looking for solution    With OS X Yosemite  Apple has integrated the batch renaming capabilities directly into Finder  Details information is available here  I have copied the steps below as well   Rename multiple items   Select the items  then Control-click one of them  In the shortcut menu  select Rename Items  In the pop-up menu below Rename Folder Items  choose to replace text in the names  add text to the names  or change the name format    Replace text  Enter the text you want to remove in the Find field  then enter the text you want to add in the    Replace with    field  Add text  Enter the text to you want to add in the field  then choose to add the text before or after the current name  Format  Choose a name format for the files  then choose to put the index  counter  or date before or after the name  Enter a name in the Custom Format field  then enter the number you want to start with   Click Rename    If you have a common pattern in your files than you can use Replace text otherwise Add text would also do the job

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If your filenames contain no whitepace and you don t have any subdirectories  you can use a simple for loop     for FILENAME in    do mv  FILENAME Unix  FILENAME  done    Otherwise use the convenient rename command  which is a perl script  - although it might not be available out of the box on every Unix  e g  OS X doesn t come with rename    A short overview at debian-administration org    Easily renaming multiple files   If your filenames contain whitespace it s easier to use find  on Linux the following should work     find   -type f -name     -printf  echo mv   h  f    h Unix  f n     sh   On BSD systems  there is no -printf option  unfortunately  But GNU findutils should be installable  on e g  Mac OS X with brew install findutils       gfind   -type f -name     -printf  mv    h  f      h Unix  f   n    sh

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You can just use -i instead of -I     ls   xargs -i mv    unix      This also works perfectly     ls - lists all the files in the directory xargs - accepts all files line by line due to the -i option    is the placeholder for all files  necessary if xargs gets more than two arguments as input   Using awk   ls -lrt   grep   -    awk   print  mv   9  unix   9       sh

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With rnm  you will need to install it    rnm -ns  Unix  fn       Or  rnm -rs     Unix        P S   I am the author of this tool

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I think this is just what you er looking for   ls   xargs -I    mv    Unix      Yes  it is simple yet elegant and powerful  and also one-liner  You can get more detailed intro from me on the page Rename Files and Directories  Add Prefix

[linux] Rename all files in a folder with a prefix in a single command

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