Comments on: Howto: Linux Rename Multiple Files At a Shell Prompt

By: zougi

zougi — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:55:32 +0000

leopinzon’s command didn’t worked for me. I used this one:

find -name ‘*exp_to_find_in_folders*’ -exec rename “s/exp_to_find_for_replacement/exp_to_replace/” {} \;

By: Nasp

Nasp — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:03:01 +0000

Well god points, but how about this :

rename muiltiple files in subfolders… (.nfo to movie.nfo )

By: Bummer

Bummer — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:53:20 +0000

“Figure 03-01-02: GradeBook class declaration with one method: Createing a Gradebook object an calling its displayMessage method.avi”
How can we bulk rename files like this? These are located in subfolders like
“Blaa: blaaaaah: bla bla: bla” etc.

None of the posted above methods not working. :(
I need replace all these stupid “:”.

By: LinuxFTW

LinuxFTW — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:25:05 +0000

i=0; for image in *.jpg; do mv “$image” “Name with spaces `printf “%.3d” $i`.jpg”; ((i++)); done

Renames:

asdlkjas.jpg
reojsd.jpg
asfkjdf.jpg

Name with spaces 000.jpg
Name with spaces 001.jpg
Name with spaces 002.jpg

By: Lord Jaguar

Lord Jaguar — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 08:15:11 +0000

Hey,

Thanks for the tip, but the rename command didnt work on my Fedora 15 x64. I didnt get any error message, but the spaces didnt go ! As one suggested above, does it work only on debian systems ? I checked man rename, there is no info on usage. Just has description of the -v switch. I am using “rename (util-linux 2.19.1)”

Thanks !

By: Kalleguld

Kalleguld — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 15:29:42 +0000

A little late , but here goes:

s/-.*\.mp3/.mp3/

removes everything after the dash and before the .mp3 (dash included)

By: Sakiwi

Sakiwi — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:52:52 +0000

rename ‘s/[^[:print:]]/_/g’ *txt
This will replace all ‘non-printable’ characters in the name with and underscore.

Or if that does not work try escaping the character, e.g:
rename ‘s/\?/_/g;s/\:/_/g’ *.txt

By: Gary

Gary — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:38:16 +0000

@paxpacis-Appreciate your input. however, I don’t think I understand your solution. Here are some example files:
AF_DD2795_199905_20110824.txt should be renamed to DD2795_199905_20110824_AF.raw
AF_DD2795_199905_20110924.txt should be renamed to DD2795_199905_20110924_AF.raw
How do I automate this?

By: paxpacis

paxpacis — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 12:58:26 +0000

@Gary
rename XX_ “” *.txt; rename .txt _XX.ext *.txt

@VIVEK
I think your example about the AXEL-CRAZYFROG.mp3 file is not correct. The – will not be added with your code. I think you forgot to include the hypen in the original name.

By: Gary

Gary — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:01:11 +0000

This is a very usefule and informative thread. However, i haven’t quite got exactly how how I would do my renaming. I need to rename daily files from format
XX_AA1234_201109.txt to AA1234_201109_XX.ext. Note that I need to change both position of a string and the extension itself. Any suggestions would be highly appreciated!

By: swain

swain — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 05:44:32 +0000

Hi, I am trying to rename some files with .ext to ones without .ext in RedHat 5

For eg: files like “ocean_11h20110906.txt” have to renamed as “ocean_11h20110906″

tried almost all the commands mentioned above. i have several such files to be renamed without extensions. Can anyone help me out. Plz treat this as urgent.

By: koma931

koma931 — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 09:29:45 +0000

On OSX I didn’t have rename handy, so I came up with this to change extensions of a bunch of files:
find . -name “*.ext1″ | sed s/ext1// | xargs -I % mv %.ext1 %.ext2

I imagine it could be done in a more simple fashion, but it works well if you need to swap something at the end or the beginning of the filenames.

By: Chary

Chary — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 06:04:04 +0000

Very Helpful. Thank You :)

By: Scott

Scott — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:11:39 +0000

rename “s/foo*/bar/g” *.a

Renames any file with an .a extension that contains “foo” to “bar” in the directory.

By: Vijay

Vijay — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 09:37:09 +0000

$ rename .bak .txt *.bak – command worked for me to rename all *.bak to *.txt

Many Thanks

By: Muhammad El-Sergani

Muhammad El-Sergani — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 11:50:39 +0000

you can do the following:
# rename .png -hd.png *.png

How about that? :)
Let me know if you need any further help

By: Muhammad El-Sergani

Muhammad El-Sergani — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 10:23:47 +0000

Excellent write up!!
Thank you sir…

Been browsing the internet for a while for this, and just came across this neat little command, instead of people writing different scripts and such.. AWESOME!!

By: Zinc

Zinc — Sat, 11 Jun 2011 11:23:14 +0000

it follows perl rules.

What you need to do is to tell it:

rename “s/-.+/\.mp3/” *.mp3

The dash will register as it should. The stop right after the dash signifies a single character. The plus after that means “one or more of the previous thing”

to test it, you don’t need to create a new file, just put -n right after rename like this:
rename -n “s/-.+/\.mp3/” *.mp3

By: Aarthi

Aarthi — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:11:41 +0000

Hey even I’m working on this kind of renaming. Did the solution provided worked for you?? It didn’t worked out for me. Please let me know how have you done it.
Thanks!

By: Aarthi

Aarthi — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 12:10:03 +0000

This rename ‘s/-*//’ *.mp3 did not work for me… Can you please tell me why it didn’t?? Also, Could you please suggest if there is any approach for this…