How to Batch Rename Files in a macOS Terminal

Question

I have a folder with a series of files named   prefix 1234 567 png prefix abcd efg png   I d like to batch remove one underscore and the middle content so the output would be   prefix 567 png prefix efg png   Relevant but not completely explanatory    How can I batch rename files using the Terminal  Regex to batch rename files in OS X Terminal

User · Accepted Answer

In your specific case you can use the following bash command (bash is the default shell on macOS):

for f in *.png; do echo mv "$f" "${f/_*_/_}"; done

^{Note: If there's a chance that your filenames start with -, place -- before them[1]:

mv -- "$f" "${f/_*_/_}"}

Note: echo is prepended to mv so as to perform a dry run. Remove it to perform actual renaming.

You can run it from the command line or use it in a script.

"${f/_*_/_}" is an application of bash parameter expansion: the (first) substring matching pattern _*_ is replaced with literal _, effectively cutting the middle token from the name.
Note that _*_ is a pattern (a wildcard expression, as also used for globbing), not a regular expression (to learn about patterns, run man bash and search for Pattern Matching).

If you find yourself batch-renaming files frequently, consider installing a specialized tool such as the Perl-based rename utility. On macOS you can install it using popular package manager Homebrew as follows:

brew install rename

Here's the equivalent of the command at the top using rename:

rename -n -e 's/_.*_/_/'  *.png

Again, this command performs a dry run; remove -n to perform actual renaming.

Similar to the bash solution, s/.../.../ performs text substitution, but - unlike in bash - true regular expressions are used.

^{[1] The purpose of special argument --, which is supported by most utilities, is to signal that subsequent arguments should be treated as operands (values), even if they look like options due to starting with -, as Jacob C. notes.}

User · Answer

I had a batch of files that looked like this  be90-01 png and needed to change the dash to underscore  I used this  which worked well   for f in    do mv   f    echo  f   tr  -         done

User · Answer

You could use sed   ls     sed -e  p s        g    xargs -n2 mv   result   prefix 567 png prefix efg png    to do a dry-run first  replace mv at the end with echo  Explanation    e  optional for only 1 sed command   p  to print the input to sed  in this case it will be the original file name before any renaming    is a replacement of   character to make sed more readable  That is  instead of using sed s search replace g  use s search replace g       the underscore is an escape character to refer to the actual     character zero or more times  as opposed to ANY character in regex  -n2   indicates that there are 2 outputs that need to be passed on to mv as parameters  for each input from ls  this sed command will generate 2 output  which will then supplied to mv

User · Answer

try this  for i in   png   do mv   i     i remove me  png  png     done   Here is another way   for file in Name  png  do mv   file   01  file   done

User · Answer

Using mmv  mmv           1  3    png

User · Answer

you can install rename command by using brew  just do brew install rename and use it

User · Answer

To rename files  you can use the rename utility   brew install rename  For example  to change a search string in all filenames in current directory   rename -nvs searchword replaceword     Remove the  n  parameter to apply the changes   More info  man rename

[bash] How to Batch Rename Files in a macOS Terminal?

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