renaming files in Linux

shorte85 · 03-01-2009, 05:53 PM

Hello, I'm pretty new to the Linux world. I'm having a hard time understanding how to go about changing file names. I have searched through this forum board for possible solutions to what I am trying to do but the ones that were on the board did not seem to make sense to me, or work.

I am using the Terminal Linux - bash shell, I hope that makes sense?

I am trying to figure out a way to change files in multiple different ways. The only one that I can see that fits is the following command:

mv file1.txt file.txt

Which renames file1.txt to file.txt.

Now I tried to use the rename command, but I did not understand that one at all. I even tried doing the solutions that were found on the board, but I couldn't figure it out (understand it).

Am I missing something?

TBC Cosmo · 03-01-2009, 06:00 PM

I guess it would help to know what your goal is to see why mv file1.txt file.txt does not fit your needs.

jay73 · 03-01-2009, 06:06 PM

Well, if you take a look at the man page for RENAME, you will see that you need to have some familiarity with the perl scripting language.

Quote:

RENAME(1) Perl Programmers Reference Guide RENAME(1)

NAME
rename - renames multiple files

SYNOPSIS
rename [ -v ] [ -n ] [ -f ] perlexpr [ files ]

DESCRIPTION
"rename" renames the filenames supplied according to the rule specified
as the first argument. The perlexpr argument is a Perl expression
which is expected to modify the $_ string in Perl for at least some of
the filenames specified. If a given filename is not modified by the
expression, it will not be renamed. If no filenames are given on the
command line, filenames will be read via standard input.

For example, to rename all files matching "*.bak" to strip the
extension, you might say

rename 's/\.bak$//' *.bak

To translate uppercase names to lower, you’d use

rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' *

OPTIONS
-v, --verbose
Verbose: print names of files successfully renamed.

-n, --no-act
No Action: show what files would have been renamed.

-f, --force
Force: overwrite existing files.

ENVIRONMENT
No environment variables are used.

AUTHOR
Larry Wall

SEE ALSO
mv(1), perl(1)

DIAGNOSTICS
If you give an invalid Perl expression you’ll get a syntax error.

BUGS
The original "rename" did not check for the existence of target
filenames, so had to be used with care. I hope I’ve fixed that (Robin
Barker).

perl v5.10.0 2008-12-23 RENAME(1)

shorte85 · 03-01-2009, 06:09 PM

When I bring up the man rename page this is all I see:

Code:

RENAME(1)          Linux Programmerâs Manual          RENAME(1)

NAME
       rename - Rename files

SYNOPSIS
       rename from to file...

DESCRIPTION
       rename  will rename the specified files by replacing the
       first occurrence of from in their name by to.
RENAME(1)          Linux Programmerâs Manual          RENAME(1)

NAME
       rename - Rename files

SYNOPSIS
       rename from to file...

DESCRIPTION
       rename  will rename the specified files by replacing the
       first occurrence of from in their name by to.

       For example, given the files  foo1,  ...,  foo9,  foo10,
       ..., foo278, the commands

              rename foo foo0 foo?
              rename foo foo0 foo??

       will  turn  them  into foo001, ..., foo009, foo010, ...,
       foo278.

       And
              rename .htm .html *.htm

       will fix the extension of your html files.

SEE ALSO
       mv(1)

So how is it different between the two of us? I copied and pasted this from Terminal window.

yancek · 03-01-2009, 06:16 PM

It would be helpful if you could give more information on exactly what you are trying to accomplish. What type of files you are trying to change and what about them you want to change.

shorte85 · 03-01-2009, 06:32 PM

I just want to rename the file names and figured there was an easier way to doing so than the follow command I have, which does work:

text1.txt, text2.txt, text3.txt to chap1.txt, chap2.txt, chap3.txt

I know that the following command works:

mv text1.txt chap1.txt; mv text2.txt chap2.txt; mv text3.txt chap3.txt

Isn't there an easier way to change those three text*.txt to chap*.txt?

Tinkster · 03-01-2009, 06:55 PM

Code:

rename text chap text*.txt

should work just fine ...

yancek · 03-01-2009, 07:02 PM

Yes.

rename text chap text*

In a terminal, cd to the directory these files are in for it to work. This will change any file in the directory beginning with "text" to "chap" so if you have files you don't want to change you will need to move them. I expect that "text" is not the actual name so...

shorte85 · 03-01-2009, 07:04 PM

Thank you so much! I was trying to do it that way but kept getting it wrong, that rename command is kind of confusing if you ask me. Thank you so much though! I appreciate it!!

Tinkster · 03-01-2009, 07:39 PM

You're most welcome ... the command is not that hard if you manage to
understand the man-page ... it's just as it says in the brief summary:

Quote:

rename from to file...

In anything file (or other names following [which the ellipsis represents]
replace the first occurrence of the string from with the string to.

In your example all files have text which you want to replace with chap,
and you want to do that to all files that have a beginning of text, followed
by a number and the extension .txt.

Cheers,
Tink

replica9000 · 03-01-2009, 11:20 PM

You could try something like KRename rather than using a terminal.

jessmo02 · 05-26-2010, 10:07 AM

Let us say there are 3 files: text1.txt, text2.txt and text3.txt. Give two sets of commands to rename these files to chap1.txt, chap2.txt and chap3.txt, rename command.
Here is the rename command:

Rename text chap *

Shadow_7 · 05-26-2010, 10:25 AM

Code:

for INPUT in chap*.txt
do 
  OUTPUT=`echo $INPUT | sed 's/chap/new/'`
  mv $INPUT $OUTPUT
done

or as a one liner

Code:

for INPUT in chap*.txt; do OUTPUT=`echo $INPUT | sed 's/chap/new/'`; mv $INPUT $OUTPUT; done

This route you can change mv to echo to see if what it's going to attempt is what you intended to be attempted. And probably a dozen other ways. If you have funky filenames you might need to do fancy stuff with mv. mv -- "old_odd_name" "new_odd_name". Or would it be single quotes? Or I could be wrong.