Renaming lots of files

Tuttle · 11-17-2004, 09:29 AM

I have a folder full of files which I want to rename. The format I want is for every word to Begin with a capital letter and for the extentions to be lowercase eg:

the wallys - bad song.MP3

becomes:

The Wallys - Bad Song.mp3

Also, some of the names have underscores and I would like to replace these with spaces. Windows 98 is so bad with filenames!!

edit: the question is - can I do it with a simple(ish) command?

sgood1971 · 11-17-2004, 10:29 AM

You can try Mass Rename which I use and like. There are several programs on this search page including one called Cantus which is specific for .mp3 files.

ahh · 11-17-2004, 01:58 PM

You can run the following in the directory containing the files you want to rename.

Code:

for i in "$(ls ./)"; do if [ -f "$i" ]; then new_name=$(echo "$i" | tr "[:upper:]" "[:lower:]" | tr "_" " " | sed -e 's/^./\u&/' -e 's/ ./\U&/g'); fi; mv "$i" "$new_name"; done

It may be prudent to test it in a temporary directory first though

Oops, spotted a small problem, got to go to work now though so I'll fix it tomorrow - unless someone beats me to it.

ahh · 11-17-2004, 02:49 PM

Got it!

Code:

for i in $(ls ./ | tr " " "="); do j=$(echo $i | tr "=" " "); if [ -f "$j" ]; then new_name=$(echo "$j" | tr "[:upper:]_" "[:lower:] " | sed -e's/^./\u&/' -e 's/ ./\U&/g'); fi; mv "$j" "$new_name"; done

It should work provided you dont have a "=" in the file name. If you do change it for any character that is not in any file name.

Tuttle · 11-18-2004, 11:15 AM

Thanks for the replies!
especially yours ahh, I know a lot of commands now and love to see the nuts and bolts of a command and how to apply it.
"mass rename" also looks good, I'll get it as well to see how it works :~]