Rename multiple files based on pattern in Unix

Question

There are multiple files in a directory that begin with prefix fgh  for example   fghfilea fghfileb fghfilec   I want to rename all of them to begin with prefix jkl  Is there a single command to do that instead of renaming each file individually

User · Answer

This script worked for me for recursive renaming with directories/file names possibly containing white-spaces:

find . -type f -name "*\;*" | while read fname; do
    dirname=`dirname "$fname"`
    filename=`basename "$fname"`
    newname=`echo "$filename" | sed -e "s/;/ /g"`
    mv "${dirname}/$filename" "${dirname}/$newname"
done

Notice the sed expression which in this example replaces all occurrences of ; with space . This should of course be replaced according to the specific needs.

User · Answer

You can also use below script  it is very easy to run on terminal       Rename multiple files at a time  for file in  FILE NAME  do     mv -i    file      file FILE NAME RENAMED FILE NAME   done   Example -  for file in  hello  do     mv -i    file      file hello JAISHREE   done

User · Answer

It was much easier  on my Mac  to do this in Ruby  Here are 2 examples     for your fgh example  renames all files from  fgh     to  jkl     files   Dir  fgh     files each do  f    f2   f gsub  fgh    jkl     system  mv   f    f2    end    renames all files in directory from  021roman rb  to  021 roman rb  files   Dir   rb   select   f  f       0-9  3  a-zA-Z      files each do  f    f1   f clone   f2   f insert 3         system  mv   f1    f2    end

User · Answer

I would recommend using my own script  which solves this problem  It also has options to change the encoding of the file names  and to convert combining diacriticals to precomposed characters  a problem I always have when I copy files from my Mac      usr bin perl    Copyright  c  2014 Andr   von Kugland    Permission is hereby granted  free of charge  to any person obtaining a   copy of this software and associated documentation files  the  Software      to deal in the Software without restriction  including without limitation   the rights to use  copy  modify  merge  publish  distribute  sublicense    and or sell copies of the Software  and to permit persons to whom the   Software is furnished to do so  subject to the following conditions     The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in   all copies or substantial portions of the Software     THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED  AS IS   WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND  EXPRESS OR   IMPLIED  INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY    FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE   AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM  DAMAGES OR OTHER   LIABILITY  WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT  TORT OR OTHERWISE  ARISING   FROM  OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER   DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE    help msg    rename pl  a script to rename files in batches  using Perl            expressions to transform their names  Usage      rename pl  options  FILE1  FILE2      Where options can be      -v                      Verbose      -vv                     Very verbose      --apply                 Really apply modifications      -e PERLCODE             Execute PERLCODE   e g   s a b g       --from-charset CS       Source charset   e g    iso-8859-1        --to-charset CS         Destination charset   e g    utf-8        --unicode-normalize NF  Unicode normalization form   e g    KD        --basename              Modifies only the last element of the path      use Encode  use Getopt  Long  use Unicode  Normalize  normalize   use File  Basename  use I18N  Langinfo qw langinfo CODESET    Getopt  Long  Configure   bundling       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                               Our variables                                             -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    my  apply   0  my  verbose   0  my  help   0  my  debug   0  my  basename   0  my  unicode normalize       my  scripts  my  from charset       my  to charset       my  codeset          -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                                            Get cmdline options                                          -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     result   GetOptions   apply    gt    apply                         verbose v     gt    verbose                         execute e s    gt    scripts                         from-charset s    gt    from charset                         to-charset s    gt    to charset                         unicode-normalize s    gt    unicode normalize                         basename    gt    basename                         help h      gt    help                         debug    gt    debug      If not going to apply  then be verbose  if    apply  amp  amp   verbose    0       verbose   1     if      scripts    -1     amp  amp     from charset eq          to charset eq         amp  amp   unicode normalize eq             ARGV    -1       help       print  help msg    exit 0      if    to charset ne     amp  amp   from charset eq           from charset eq     amp  amp   to charset ne           to charset eq     amp  amp   from charset eq     amp  amp   unicode normalize ne           codeset   langinfo CODESET      to charset    codeset if  from charset ne     amp  amp   to charset eq        from charset    codeset if  from charset eq     amp  amp   to charset ne          -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------             Composes the filter function using the  scripts array and possibly other options            -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------     f    sub filterfunc     n    my   s   shift  n    f         my   d   dirname   s   n    my   s   basename   s   n  if   basename    0    f         for    s    n    f                 n  foreach   scripts       Get scripts from  -e  opt      Handle charset translation and normalization  if    from charset ne      amp  amp    to charset ne          if   unicode normalize eq            f                   encode    to charset    decode    from charset           n       else        f                   encode    to charset    normalize    unicode normalize    decode    from charset            n        elsif    from charset ne          to charset ne            die  You can t use  from-charset  nor  to-charset  alone     elsif   unicode normalize ne          f                   encode    codeset    normalize    unicode normalize    decode    codeset            n     f           n    f           s     d           s  n  if   basename    0    f         return   s  n  n   print  Generated function  n n f  if   debug      -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                     Evaluates the filter function body  so to define it in our scope                    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    eval  f     -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                      Main loop  which passes names through filters and renames files                    -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    foreach   ARGV       old name          new name   filterfunc         if   old name ne  new name        if    apply or  rename  old name   new name           print    old name    gt    new name  n  if   verbose         else         print  Cannot rename   old name  to   new name   n             else       print    old name  unchanged  n  if   verbose  gt  1

User · Answer

To install the Perl rename script    sudo cpan install File  Rename   There are two renames as mentioned in the comments in Stephan202 s answer  Debian based distros have the Perl rename  Redhat rpm distros have the C rename  OS X doesn t have one installed by default  at least in 10 8   neither does Windows Cygwin

User · Answer

rename might not be in every system  so if you don t have it  use the shell this example in bash shell  for f in fgh   do mv   f     f fgh xxx   done

User · Answer

There are many ways to do it  not all of these will work on all unixy systems      ls   cut -c4-   xargs -I   mv fgh   jkl    The    may be replaced by anything you find convenient  You could do this with find -exec too but that behaves subtly different on many systems  so I usually avoid that for f in fgh   do mv   f     f fgh jkl   done   Crude but effective as they say      rename  s  fgh jkl   fgh   Real pretty  but rename is not present on BSD  which is the most common unix system afaik  rename fgh jkl fgh  ls   perl -ne  chomp  next unless -e   o       s fgh jkl   next if -e  rename  o        If you insist on using Perl  but there is no rename on your system  you can use this monster    Some of those are a bit convoluted and the list is far from complete  but you will find what you want here for pretty much all unix systems

User · Answer

Using renamer     renamer --find   fgh  --replace jkl   --dry-run   Remove the --dry-run flag once you re happy the output looks correct

User · Answer

I wrote this script to search for all  mkv files recursively renaming found files to  avi  You can customize it to your neeeds  I ve added some other things such as getting file directory  extension  file name from a file path just incase you need to refer to something in the future    find   -type f -name    mkv    while read fp  do  fd   dirname    fp     fn   basename    fp     ext    fn        f    fn       new fp    fd    f  avi  mv -v   fp    new fp   done

User · Answer

This is how sed and mv can be used together to do rename   for f in fgh   do mv   f    echo   f    sed  s  fgh jkl g    done   As per comment below  if the file names have spaces in them  quotes may need to surround the sub-function that returns the name to move the files to   for f in fgh   do mv   f     echo  f   sed  s  fgh jkl g     done

User · Answer

Another possible parameter expansion   for f in fgh   do mv --   f   jkl  f 3    done

User · Answer

Using mmv   mmv  fgh    jkl 1

User · Answer

Using StringSolver tools  windows  amp  Linux bash  which process by examples   filter fghfilea ok fghreport ok notfghfile notok  mv --all --filter fghfilea jklfilea   It first computes a filter based on examples  where the input is the file names and the output  ok and notok  arbitrary strings   If filter had the option --auto or was invoked alone after this command  it would create a folder ok and a folder notok and push files respectively to them   Then using the filter  the mv command is a semi-automatic move which becomes automatic with the modifier --auto  Using the previous filter thanks to --filter  it finds a mapping from fghfilea to jklfilea and then applies it on all filtered files     Other one-line solutions  Other equivalent ways of doing the same  each line is equivalent   so you can choose your favorite way of doing it   filter fghfilea ok fghreport ok notfghfile notok  mv --filter fghfilea jklfilea  mv filter fghfilea ok fghreport ok notfghfile notok  auto --all --filter fghfilea  mv fghfilea jklfilea    Even better  automatically infers the file name filter fghfilea ok fghreport ok notfghfile notok  auto --all --filter  mv fghfilea jklfilea    Multi-step solution  To carefully find if the commands are performing well  you can type the following   filter fghfilea ok filter fghfileb ok filter fghfileb notok   and when you are confident that the filter is good  perform the first move   mv fghfilea jklfilea   If you want to test  and use the previous filter  type   mv --test --filter   If the transformation is not what you wanted  e g  even with mv --explain you see that something is wrong   you can type mv --clear to restart moving files  or add more examples mv input1 input2 where input1 and input2 are other examples  When you are confident  just type  mv --filter   and voil    All the renaming is done using the filter   DISCLAIMER  I am a co-author of this work made for academic purposes  There might also be a bash-producing feature soon

User · Answer

This worked for me using regexp   I wanted files to be renamed like this   file0001 txt - gt  1 txt ofile0002 txt - gt  2 txt  f i l e0003 txt - gt  3 txt   usig  the   a-z    0   0-9     regexp where    0-9     is a group substring to use on the rename command  ls -1   awk  match  0    a-z     0   0-9        arr    print   arr 0        arr 1     xargs  -l mv   Produces   mv file0001 txt 1 txt mv ofile0002 txt 2 txt mv f i l e0003 txt 3 txt   Another example   file001abc txt - gt  abc1 txt ofile0002abcd txt - gt  abcd2 txt   ls -1   awk  match  0    a-z     0   0-9       a-z      arr    print   arr 0        arr 2  arr 1     xargs  -l mv   Produces     mv file001abc txt abc1 txt   mv ofile0002abcd txt abcd2 txt    Warning  be careful

User · Answer

Using find  xargs and sed   find   -name  fgh   -type f -print0   xargs -0 -I    sh -c  mv         dirname        echo   basename         sed  s  fgh jkl g       It s more complex than  nik s solution but it allows to rename files recursively  For instance  the structure      -- fghdir         -- fdhfilea         -- fghfilea  -- fghfile  e  -- fghfilea  -- fghfileb  -- fghfilec  -- other      -- fghfile  e      -- fghfilea      -- fghfileb      -- fghfilec   would be transformed to this      -- fghdir         -- fdhfilea         -- jklfilea  -- jklfile  e  -- jklfilea  -- jklfileb  -- jklfilec  -- other      -- jklfile  e      -- jklfilea      -- jklfileb      -- jklfilec   The key to make it work with xargs is to invoke the shell from xargs

User · Answer

There are several ways  but using rename will probably be the easiest   Using one version of rename   rename  s  fgh jkl   fgh    Using another version of rename  same as Judy2K s answer    rename fgh jkl fgh    You should check your platform s man page to see which of the above applies

User · Answer

My version of renaming mass files   for i in    do     echo  mv  i  i  done   sed -e  s from pattern to pattern g     gt  result1 sh sh result1 sh

User · Answer

bin sh   replace all files ended witn  f77 to  f90 in a directory  for filename in   f77 do       echo  filename      b  echo  filename   cut -d  -f1      echo  b         mv    filename      filename  f77  f90      done

User · Answer

On Solaris you can try   for file in  find    -name   TextForRename     do      mv -f   file     file TextForRename NewText   done

User · Answer

rename fgh jkl fgh

User · Answer

Here s a way to do it using command-line Groovy   groovy -e  new File      eachFileMatch   fgh      it renameTo it name replaceFirst  fgh    jkl

User · Answer

Generic command would be find  path to files -name   lt search gt    -exec bash -c  mv  0   0  lt search gt   lt replace gt          where  lt search gt  and  lt replace gt  should be replaced with your source and target respectively  As a more specific example tailored to your problem  should be run from the same folder where your files are   the above command would look like  find   -name  gfh   -exec bash -c  mv  0   0 gfh jkl         For a  quot dry run quot  add echo before mv  so that you d see what commands are generated  find   -name  gfh   -exec bash -c  echo mv  0   0 gfh jkl

User · Answer

A generic script to run a sed expression on a list of files  combines the sed solution with the rename solution       bin sh  e  1 shift  for f in     do     fNew   echo   f    sed   e       mv   f    fNew   done   Invoke by passing the script a sed expression  and then any list of files  just like a version of rename   script sh  s  fgh jkl   fgh

[file] Rename multiple files based on pattern in Unix

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