Renaming Lots of Files in Linux According to a Pattern

Rename multiple files by replacing a particular pattern in the filenames using a shell script

An example to help you get off the ground.

for f in *.jpg; do mv "$f" "$(echo "$f" | sed s/IMG/VACATION/)"; done

In this example, I am assuming that all your image files contain the string IMG and you want to replace IMG with VACATION.

The shell automatically evaluates *.jpg to all the matching files.

The second argument of mv (the new name of the file) is the output of the sed command that replaces IMG with VACATION.

If your filenames include whitespace pay careful attention to the "$f" notation. You need the double-quotes to preserve the whitespace.

Renaming lots of files in Linux according to a pattern

My favorite solution is my own rename script. The simplest example that maps to your problems are these:

% rename 's/_/-/g' *
% rename 's/(\p{Lower})(\p{Upper})/$1 $2/g' *

Although I really hate whitespace in my filenames, especially vertical whitespace:

 % rename 's/\s//g' *
 % rename 's/\v//g' *

et cetera. It’s based on a script by The Larry Wall, but extended with options, as in:

usage: /home/tchrist/scripts/rename [-ifqI0vnml] [-F file] perlexpr [files]
    -i          ask about clobbering existent files
    -f          force clobbers without inquiring
    -q          quietly skip clobbers without inquiring
    -I          ask about all changes
    -0          read null-terminated filenames
    -v          verbosely says what its doing 
    -V          verbosely says what its doing but with newlines between old and new filenames
    -n          don't really do it
    -m          to always rename
    -l          to always symlink
    -F path     read filelist to change from magic path(s)

As you see, it can change not just the names of files, but where symbolic links are pointing to using the same pattern. You don’t have to use a s/// pattern, although often one does.

The other tools in that directory are mostly for Unicode work, of which there are some super-useful ones.

find a pattern in files and rename them

You are echo'ing your 'mv' command, not actually executing it. Change to:

find . -name '*-GHBAG-*' -exec bash -c 'mv $0 ${0/GHBAG/stream-agg}' {} \;

How to rename multiple files in several folders?

There are a thousand ways to do it, I'd do it with Perl, something like this will work:

find files -type f -name "file*" | perl -ne 'chomp; $f=$_; $f=~s/\/file/\/doc/; `mv $_  $f`;'

• -ne process as inline script for each line input
• chomp clean a newline
• $f is new filename, same as old filename
• s/\/file/\/doc/ replace "/file" with "/doc" in the new filename
• mv $_ $f rename the file by running an OS command with back ticks

Find multiple files and rename them in Linux

You can use find to find all matching files recursively:

$ find . -iname "*dbg*" -exec rename _dbg.txt .txt '{}' \;

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EDIT: what the '{}' and \; are?

The -exec argument makes find execute rename for every matching file found. '{}' will be replaced with the path name of the file. The last token, \; is there only to mark the end of the exec expression.

All that is described nicely in the man page for find:

 -exec utility [argument ...] ;
         True if the program named utility returns a zero value as its
         exit status.  Optional arguments may be passed to the utility.
         The expression must be terminated by a semicolon (``;'').  If you
         invoke find from a shell you may need to quote the semicolon if
         the shell would otherwise treat it as a control operator.  If the
         string ``{}'' appears anywhere in the utility name or the argu-
         ments it is replaced by the pathname of the current file.
         Utility will be executed from the directory from which find was
         executed.  Utility and arguments are not subject to the further
         expansion of shell patterns and constructs.

Renaming files in a folder to sequential numbers

Try to use a loop, let, and printf for the padding:

a=1
for i in *.jpg; do
  new=$(printf "%04d.jpg" "$a") #04 pad to length of 4
  mv -i -- "$i" "$new"
  let a=a+1
done

using the -i flag prevents automatically overwriting existing files, and using -- prevents mv from interpreting filenames with dashes as options.

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