Multiple File Rename

maker10 · 10-26-2007, 01:54 PM

Hi All,

I'm trying to rename multiple files in a directory that are named as such:

Iron_Maiden_-_11_-_Juanita.mp3
Iron_Maiden_-_11_-_My_Generation.mp3
Iron_Maiden_-_13_-_Black_Bart_Blues.mp3
Iron_Maiden_-_16_-_Wasted_Years_'99_(Live).mp3
Iron_Maiden_-_15_-_Charlotte_The_Harlot_'88.mp3
Iron_Maiden_-_10_-_Judgement_Day.mp3
Iron_Maiden_-_14_-_Prowler_'88.mp3

What I would like to do is remove up to the Iron_Maiden_-_14_-_ and rename them to start with the track number and then finish with the name as such:

11-Juanita.mp3
11-My_Generation.mp3

I've looked on the web and I'm completely baffled by the all the info out there.

Thanks for the help.

George

MensaWater · 10-26-2007, 03:13 PM

Something like the following should do it:

#!/bin/bash
cd directory
for file in `ls -1`
do newfile=`echo $file | awk -F_ '{print $4"-"$6}'`
echo mv $file $newfile
done

In above change "directory" to the actual directory name where your music files are.

What it does is uses the underscore (_) as the delimiter for awk and prints the 4th and 6th and field as split by that delimiter. It puts the literal dash (-) in between those.

marozsas · 10-26-2007, 03:16 PM

It is not really difficult, you just need to known a bit of regular expressions and bash...I hope this motivate you to learn more about.

Code:

for f in Iron_Maiden*.mp3; do 
 new=$(echo $f | sed -e 's/Iron_Maiden_-_[0-9]*_-_//'); 
 echo mv "${f}" "${new}"; 
done

Please, note there is a echo in front of the mv command. This is a debug/safe option. run this as is just to see what is the output. If everything looks good, remove the echo command and the files will be renamed.

PMorph · 10-26-2007, 04:30 PM

One more:

Code:

rename 's/Iron_Maiden_-_//' *.mp3
rename 's/_-_/-/' *.mp3

m.a.l.'s pa · 10-26-2007, 11:25 PM

The applications gwenrename and krename work well with Konqueror and/or Krusader for doing bulk renaming of files.

The light-weight file browser Thunar comes with a nice GUI for doing the same thing, called Bulk Rename.

marozsas · 10-30-2007, 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PMorph

One more:

Code:

rename 's/Iron_Maiden_-_//' *.mp3
rename 's/_-_/-/' *.mp3

strange, but the rename command installed in my system does not have this sed-like feature. It is not mentioned in the rename's man page either...Mine comes from util-linux-2.13-0.54.1.fc7, and yours ?

dancro · 11-06-2007, 09:24 AM

marozsas,
I tried this the way you described and it worked beautifully.
Thank you, and all the others who contribute help so freely.

Dan

nx5000 · 11-06-2007, 09:32 AM

I also have this very cool "sed feature" of rename which I discovered not so long ago.

/usr/bin/rename is linked to /etc/alternatives/rename which is linked to /usr/bin/prename

prename is part of perl:

perl 5.8.8-11.1 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction and Report