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

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

Using mmv

mmv '*_*_*' '#1_#3' *.png

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

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

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

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.

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