Renaming files in a folder to sequential numbers

Question

I want to rename the files in a directory to sequential numbers  Based on creation date of the files   For Example sadf jpg to 0001 jpg  wrjr3 jpg to 0002 jpg and so on  the number of leading zeroes depending on the total amount of files  no need for extra zeroes if not needed

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To me this combination of answers worked perfectly:

ls -v | gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv %s %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | bash

ls -v helps with ordering 1 10 9 in correct: 1 9 10 order, avoiding filename extension problems with jpg JPG jpeg
gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv %s %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' renumbers with 4 characters and leading zeros. By avoiding mv I do not accidentally try to overwrite anything that is there already by accidentally having the same number.
bash executes

Be aware of what @xhienne said, piping unknown content to bash is a security risk. But this was not the case for me as I was using my scanned photos.

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Again using Pero s solution with little modifying  because find will be traversing the directory tree in the order items are stored within the directory entries  This will  mostly  be consistent from run to run  on the same machine and will essentially be  file directory creation order  if there have been no deletes   However  in some case you need to get some logical order  say  by name  which is used in this example   find -name    jpg    sort -n     find jpegs gawk  BEGIN  a 1    printf  mv  s  04d jpg n    0  a          build mv command bash   run that command

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Nowadays there is an option after you select multiple files for renaming  I have seen in thunar file manager     select multiple files check options select rename   A prompt comes with all files in that particular dir just check with the category section

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I had a similar issue and wrote a shell script for that reason  I ve decided to post it regardless that many good answers were already posted because I think it can be helpful for someone  Feel free to improve it    numerate   Gnutt The behavior you want can be achieved by typing the following      numerate sh -d  lt path to directory gt  -o modtime -L 4 -b  lt startnumber gt  -r   If the option -r is left out the reaming will be only simulated  Should be helpful for testing    The otion L describes the length of the target number  which will be filled with leading zeros   it is also possible to add a prefix suffix with the options -p  lt prefix gt  -s  lt suffix gt     In case somebody wants the files to be sorted numerically before they get numbered  just remove the -o modtime option

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Let us assume we have these files in a directory  listed in order of creation  the first being the oldest   a jpg b JPG c jpeg d tar gz e   then ls -1cr outputs exactly the list above  You can then use rename   ls -1cr   xargs rename -n  s                 our  i  sprintf   03d 1    i    e    which outputs   rename a jpg  000 jpg  rename b JPG  001 JPG  rename c jpeg  002 jpeg  rename d tar gz  003 tar gz  Use of uninitialized value  1 in concatenation     or string at  eval 4  line 1  rename e  004    The warning    use of uninitialized value          is displayed for files without an extension  you can ignore it   Remove -n from the rename command to actually apply the renaming   This answer is inspired by Luke   s answer of April 2014  It ignores Gnutt   s requirement of setting the number of leading zeroes depending on the total amount of files

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On OSX  install the rename script from Homebrew   brew install rename   Then you can do it really ridiculously easily   rename -e  s     N jpg     jpg   Or to add a nice prefix   rename -e  s    photo- N jpg     jpg

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using Pero s solution on OSX required some modification  I used   find   -name    jpg      awk  BEGIN  a 0    printf  mv    s    04d jpg n    0  a          bash   note  the backslashes are there for line continuation  edit July 20  2015  incorporated  klaustopher s feedback to quote the    s   argument of the mv command in order to support filenames with spaces

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Beauty in one line   ls -v   cat -n   while read n f  do mv -n   f    n ext   done    You can change  ext with  png   jpg  etc

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Follow command rename all files to sequence and also lowercase extension   rename --counter-format 000001 --lower-case --keep-extension --expr         N  if  EXT

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Here a another solution with  rename  command   find -name  access log   gz    sort -Vr   rename  s   d    1 1 ge

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This script will sort the files by creation date on Mac OS bash  I use it to mass rename videos  Just change the extension and the first part of the name   ls -trU   mp4  awk  BEGIN  a 0    printf  mv  s lecture  03d mp4 n    0  a        bash

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ls -1tr   rename -vn  s    our  i if   i   i 1   sprintf   04d jpg    i    e    rename -vn - remove n for off test mode    i 1   - control start number    04d jpg  - control count zero 04 and set output extension  jpg

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Pero s answer got me here     I wanted to rename files relative to time as the image viewers did not display images in time order   ls -tr   jpg     list jpegs relative to time gawk  BEGIN  a 1    printf  mv  s  04d jpg n    0  a          build mv command bash   run that command

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The majority of the other solutions will overwrite existing files already named as a number  This is particularly a problem if running the script  adding more files  and then running the script again   This script renames existing numerical files first      usr bin perl  use strict  use warnings   use File  Temp qw tempfile    my  dir    ARGV 0      or die  Please specify directory as first argument    opendir my  dh   dir  or die  can t opendir  dir          First rename any files that are already numeric while  my  files   grep      0-9              readdir  dh         for my  old   files            my  ext    old                    1               my   fh   new    tempfile DIR   gt   dir  SUFFIX   gt   ext           close  fh          rename   dir  old    new           rewinddir  dh  my  i  while  my  file   readdir  dh         next if  file      A      z       my  ext    file                    1           rename   dir  file   sprintf   s  04d s    dir     i   ext

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a 1  for i in   jpg  do  mv --   i    a jpg   a  expr  a   1  done

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Try to use a loop  let  and printf for the padding   a 1 for i in   jpg  do   new   printf   04d jpg    a    04 pad to length of 4   mv -i --   i    new    let a a 1 done   using the -i flag prevents automatically overwriting existing files

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To work in all situations  put a    for files that have space in the name  find   -name    jpg    gawk  BEGIN  a 1    printf  mv    s    04d jpg n    0  a        bash

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I like gauteh s solution for its simplicity  but it has an important drawback  When running on thousands of files  you can get  argument list too long  message  more on this   and second  the script can get really slow  In my case  running it on roughly 36 000 files  script moved approx  one item per second  I m not really sure why this happens  but the rule I got from colleagues was  find is your friend    find -name    jpg      find jpegs gawk  BEGIN  a 1    printf  mv  s  04d jpg n    0  a          build mv command bash   run that command   To count items and build command  gawk was used  Note the main difference  though  By default find searches for files in current directory and its subdirectories  so be sure to limit the search on current directory only  if necessary  use man find to see how

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I spent 3-4 hours developing this solution for an article on this  https   www cloudsavvyit com 8254 how-to-bulk-rename-files-to-numeric-file-names-in-linux  if     -r  e -a   -r  c    then echo  pdf   gt   e  echo 1  gt   c  find   -name  quot     cat  e  quot  -print0   xargs -0 -t -I   bash -c  mv -n  quot    quot    cat  c    cat  e  echo      cat  c    1    gt   c   rm -f  e  c  fi  This works for any type of filename  spaces  special chars  by using correct  0 escaping by both find and xargs  and you can set a start file naming offset by increasing echo 1 to any other number if you like  Set extension at start  pdf in example here   It will also not overwrite any existing files

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Here is what worked for me  I Have used rename command so that if any file contains spaces in name of it then   mv command dont get confused between spaces and actual file   Here i replaced spaces       in a file name with     for all jpg files       bin bash rename  y        jpg          replacing spaces with   let x 0  for i in   jpg do     let x  x 1      mv  i  x jpg done

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To renumber 6000  files in one folder you could use the  Rename  option of the ACDsee program   For defining a prefix use this format           Then set the start number and press Rename and the program will rename all 6000 files with sequential numbers

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If your rename doesn t support -N  you can do something like this  ls -1 --color never -c   xargs rename -n  s    our  i  sprintf  quot  04d jpg quot    i    e   Edit To start with a given number  you can use the  somewhat ugly-looking  code below  just replace 123 with the number you want  ls -1 --color never  -c   xargs rename -n  s    our  i  if   i     i 123    sprintf  quot  04d jpg quot    i    e   This lists files in order by creation time  newest first  add -r to ls to reverse sort   then sends this list of files to rename   Rename uses perl code in the regex to format and increment counter  However  if you re dealing with JPEG images with EXIF information  I d recommend exiftool This is from the exiftool documentation  under  quot Renaming Examples quot     exiftool  -FileName lt CreateDate  -d  Y m d  H M S  -c   e dir     Rename all images in  quot dir quot  according to the  quot CreateDate quot  date and time  adding a copy number with leading  -  if the file already exists   quot  -c quot    and    preserving the original file extension   e    Note the extra     necessary to escape the filename codes   c and  e  in the date format string

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Sorted by time  limited to jpg  leading zeroes and a basename  in case you likely want one    ls -t   jpg   cat -n                                               while read n f  do mv   f     printf thumb  04d jpg  n    done    all on one line  without the

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with  rename  command  rename -N 0001 -X  s     N     jpg   or  rename -N 0001  s     N jpg     jpg

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A very simple bash one liner that keeps the original extensions  adds leading zeros  and also works in OSX   num 0  for i in    do mv   i     printf   04d   num    i         num      done   Simplified version of http   ubuntuforums org showthread php t 1355021

[bash] Renaming files in a folder to sequential numbers

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