How do I rename the extension for a bunch of files

Question

In a directory  I have a bunch of   html files  I d like to rename them all to   txt   How can I do that  I use the bash shell

User · Answer

Rename file extensions for all files under current directory and sub directories without any other packages (only use shell script):

Create a shell script rename.sh under current directory with the following code:

#!/bin/bash

for file in $(find . -name "*$1"); do
  mv "$file" "${file%$1}$2"
done

Run it by ./rename.sh .old .new.

Eg. ./rename.sh .html .txt

User · Answer

One line  no loops   ls -1   xargs -L 1 -I    bash -c  mv  1    1     txt          Example     ls 60acbc4d-3a75-4090-85ad-b7d027df8145 json  ac8453e2-0d82-4d43-b80e-205edb754700 json   ls -1   xargs -L 1 -I    bash -c  mv  1    1     txt          ls 60acbc4d-3a75-4090-85ad-b7d027df8145 txt  ac8453e2-0d82-4d43-b80e-205edb754700 txt

User · Answer

Here is an example of the rename command   rename -n    s   htm    html       htm   The -n means that it s a test run and will not actually change any files  It will show you a list of files that would be renamed if you removed the -n  In the case above  it will convert all files in the current directory from a file extension of  htm to  html   If the output of the above test run looked ok then you could run the final version   rename -v    s   htm    html       htm   The -v is optional  but it s a good idea to include it because it is the only record you will have of changes that were made by the rename command as shown in the sample output below     rename -v  s   htm    html     htm 3 htm renamed as 3 html 4 htm renamed as 4 html 5 htm renamed as 5 html   The tricky part in the middle is a Perl substitution with regular expressions  highlighted below   rename -v    s   htm    html       htm

User · Answer

After someone else s website crawl  I ended up with thousands of files missing the  html extension  across a wide tree of subdirectories   To rename them all in one shot  except the files already having a  html extension  most of them had none at all   this worked for me   cd wwwroot find   -xtype f    -iname   html   -exec mv -iv           html         batch rename files to append  html suffix IF MISSING   In the OP s case I might modify that slightly  to only rename   txt files  like so   find   -xtype f  -iname   txt   -exec filename       mv -iv   filename      txt html         Broken down  hammertime     -iname   txt   - Means consider ONLY files already ending in  txt  mv -iv      txt html     - When find passes a    as the filename    filename     extracts its basename without any extension to form the parameters to mv  bash takes the  txt html  to rewrite it as two parameters so the final command runs as  mv -iv  filename txt   filename html   Fix needed though  dealing with spaces in filenames

User · Answer

Nice  amp  simple    find   -iname   html  -exec mv       basename     html  text

User · Answer

You can also make a function in Bash  add it to  bashrc or something and then use it wherever you want   change-ext         for file in    1  do mv   file     basename   file    1   2   done     Usage   change-ext css scss   Source of code in function  https   stackoverflow com a 1224786 6732111

User · Answer

A bit late to the party  You could do it with xargs   ls   html   xargs -I    sh -c  mv  1  basename  1  html  txt  -      Or if all your files are in some folder  ls folder   html   xargs -I    sh -c  mv  1 folder  basename  1  html  txt  -

User · Answer

This worked for me on OSX from  txt to  txt bak  find   -name    txt  -exec sh -c  mv   0     0  txt  txt bak

User · Answer

Try this  rename  html  txt   html    usage    rename  find   replace with   criteria

User · Answer

You want to use rename    rename -S  html  txt   html   This does exactly what you want - it will change the extension from  html to  txt for all files matching   html   Note  Greg Hewgill correctly points out this is not a bash builtin  and is a seperate Linux command  If you just need something on Linux this should work fine  if you need something more cross-platform then take a look at one of the other answers

User · Answer

I wrote this code in my  bashrc alias find-ext  read -p  quot Path  dot for current    quot  p path  read -p  quot Ext  unpunctured    quot  p ext1  find  p path -type f -name  quot    quot  p ext1  alias rename-ext  read -p  quot Path  dot for current    quot  p path  read -p  quot Ext  unpunctured    quot  p ext1  read -p  quot Change by ext   unpunctured    quot  p ext2  echo -en  quot  nFound files  n quot   find  p path -type f -name  quot    p ext1 quot   find  p path -type f -name  quot    p ext1 quot  -exec sh -c     mv  quot  1 quot   quot   1       p ext1           p ext2     quot                echo -en  quot  nChanged Files  n quot   find  p path -type f -name  quot    p ext2 quot     In a folder like  quot  home  lt user gt  example-files quot  having this structure    home  lt user gt  example-files   file1 txt file2 txt file3 pdf file4 csv    The commands would behave like this     find-text Path  dot for current   example-files  Ext  unpunctured   txt  example-files file1 txt example-files file2 txt      rename-text Path  dot for current     example-files Ext  unpunctured   txt Change by ext   unpunctured   mp3  Found files    example-files file1 txt   example-files file1 txt  Changed Files    example-files file1 mp3   example-files file1 mp3

User · Answer

This is a good way to modify multiple extensions at once   for fname in    mp4 avi  do    mv -v   fname     fname       mkv  done   Note  be careful at the extension size to be the same  the

User · Answer

rename  s   html    txt     html   does exactly what you want

User · Answer

For an better solution  with only bash functionality  as opposed to external calls   see one of the other answers     The following would do and does not require the system to have the rename program  although you would most often have this on a system    for file in   html  do     mv   file     basename   file   html  txt  done   EDIT  As pointed out in the comments  this does not work for filenames with spaces in them without proper quoting  now added above   When working purely on your own files that you know do not have spaces in the filenames this will work but whenever you write something that may be reused at a later time  do not skip proper quoting

User · Answer

Unfortunately it s not trivial to do portably  You probably need a bit of expr magic   for file in   html  do echo mv --   file     expr   file             html   txt   done   Remove the echo once you re happy it does what you want   Edit  basename is probably a little more readable for this particular case  although expr is more flexible in general

User · Answer

Similarly to what was suggested before  this is how I did it   find   -name   OldText   -exec sh -c  mv   0     0 OldText NewText            I first validated with  find   -name   OldText   -exec sh -c  echo mv   0     0 OldText NewText

User · Answer

The command mmv seems to do this task very efficiently on a huge number of files  tens of thousands in a second   For example  to rename all  xml files to  html files  use this    mmv     xml    1 2 html    the   will match the path  the   will match the filename  and these are referred to as  1 and  2 in the replacement name    Answers based on exec or pipes were either too slow or failed on a very large number of files

User · Answer

On a Mac      Install rename if you haven t  brew install rename rename -S  html  txt   html

User · Answer

If using bash  there s no need for external commands like sed  basename  rename  expr  etc   for file in   html do   mv   file     file  html  txt  done

User · Answer

This is the slickest solution I ve found that works on OSX and Linux  and it works nicely with git too   find   -name    js  -exec bash -c  mv   1     1  js   tsx  -          and with git   find   -name    js  -exec bash -c  git mv   1     1  js   tsx  -

User · Answer

This question explicitly mentions Bash  but if you happen to have ZSH available it is pretty simple   zmv           1 txt    If you get zsh  command not found  zmv then simply run   autoload -U zmv   And then try again   Thanks to this original article for the tip about zmv

User · Answer

If you prefer PERL  there is a short PERL script  originally written by Larry Wall  the creator of PERL  that will do exactly what you want here   tips webdesign10 com files rename pl txt   For your example the following should do the trick   rename pl  s html txt     html

User · Answer

Here is what i used to rename  edge files to  blade php  for file in   edge  do     mv   file     basename   file   edge  blade php   done   Works like charm

User · Answer

For Ubuntu Users     rename  s   html    txt     html

User · Answer

Here is a solution  using AWK  Make sure the files are present in the working directory  Else  cd to the directory where the html files are located and then execute the below command  for i in   ls   grep  html   do j   echo  i   grep -oh  quot   w   quot    awk   print  1 quot txt quot      mv  i  j  done

[bash] How do I rename the extension for a bunch of files?

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