| rename 's/string-to-replace/with-what/' * | the * wild card will search every file in the directory and replace the string all of them. Use extensions to be safe, if need be, e.g. *.jpg; and use the flag "g" to replace every instance on a line: 's/string/new/g' |
| rename 's/\.JPG/\.jpg/' * | the forward-slashes escape the dots, which otherwise would be a bash pattern |
| rename 's/\.JPG//' * | this will strip the extension off file names |
| rename 's/ //' * | this will remove spaces from file names |
| rename 's/ /_/' * | this will replace spaces for underlines |
| rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' * | this will change upper case letters to lower case in all file names |
| rename 's/(.*)/PREFIX$1/' *.odt or, simpler rename 's/^/PREFIX/' *.odt |
prepends a string PREFIX to files of .odt type |
| rename 's/(.*)/$1SUFFIX/' beach.png or rename 's/$/SUFFIX/' file |
appends a string SUFFIX to the file, but appends to end, e.g. beach.png_original |
| rename 's/\.(.*)/SUFFIX.$1/' *.png | appends a string SUFFIX to files of .png type, inside the extension, ie beach_01-03-12.png note: if we use 's/(.*)\.(.*)/$1SUFFIX.$2/' as can be found on some web pages, if you try appending digits, say 33 and so enter "$133.$2" the file will vanish! |
| for file in * ; do mv "$file" "${file:0:8}INFIX${file:8}" ; done | inserts a string INFIX to all file names in the dir, at character 8 |
| for file in *; do mv "$file" "$(echo $file | sed -e 's/string-to-replace/with-what/')"; done | nb, rename command may not be the best for a huge number of files, but it's not bad. for with mv and sed can be used (as below) |
| rename 's/whot/what/' **/*.odt | yet rename can search deep into all levels, with globstars |
| find . -depth -name "* *" -execdir rename 's/ /_/g' "{}" \; | this will replace spaces for all files and directories, going to furthest depth first and working its way out to top of each dir hierarchy (without "-depth" when find gets to a dir with space in name it will change the name of it and not go deeper, because the dir name was changed so the paths below have changed) |
| for file in *; do mv "$file" "$(echo $file | sed -e 's/^.....//')"; done or for file in *; do mv "$file" "$(echo $file | sed 's/^.\{5\}//')"; done or for file in *; do mv "$file" "`echo $file | cut -c5-`"; done |
removes here the first 5 characters of all the files names in the dir for reads the file name, then mv writes that file a new name, which it hears from echo which puts the original file name through sed. here the "-c5" cuts until chracter 5, so it cuts off 4 char |
| for file in *; do mv "$file" "$(echo $file | sed -e 's/..$//')"; done | this one removes 2 characters from the back of file names, including from the very end ie extension |
| for file in *; do mv "$file" "$(echo $file | sed -e 's/\(.*\)[0-9a-zA-Z]\{2\}\.\([^.]*\)/\1.\2/')"; done this part ([^.]*\) checks to see if the . is the last one or not (ie extension) |
this is the one for removing last two characters before the extension of all files in the dir. Just a little Warning! if removing the last 2 char from all files will produce all with the same name, there will be only ONE file remaining from all of them after running this sed! All files will write to the same name, leaving only one file. |
| i=0; for file in *; do mv "$file" $(printf "NAME_%0.3d.jpg" $i); i=$((i+1)); done | this one took me hours to find! it renames files in the dir with sequential numbering, just like the GUI renamers do. Obviously, replace NAME_ and .jpg with what you like. The 3 stands for how many digits to the numbering, i=0 sets the number to start counting from, and +1 denotes the step. |