Renaming part of a filename

Question

I have loads of files which look like this:

DET01-ABC-5_50-001.dat
...
DET01-ABC-5_50-0025.dat

and I want them to look like this:

DET01-XYZ-5_50-001.dat
...
DET01-XYZ-5_50-0025.dat

How can I do this?

score 192 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 08 '09 at 08:56

192

There are a couple of variants of a rename command, in your case, it may be as simple as

rename ABC XYZ *.dat

You may have a version which takes a Perl regex;

rename 's/ABC/XYZ/' *.dat

answered Sep 08 '09 at 08:56

Paul Dixon

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I don't rename is available in all Unix variants. Sed is a good fall back. – Jim Sep 08 '09 at 14:02
Not working for me, nothing happens – dhein Aug 16 '17 at 10:05
I had to use `'s/ABC*/XYZ/'` as regex for files like `ABCD...` – Shirkam Dec 28 '17 at 15:12
7

You suggestions didn't work for me, but this command worked: `$ find . -name '*ABC*' -exec rename 's/ABC/XYZ/' {} \;` I'm on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS – Megidd Jun 08 '18 at 11:44
There is `perl-rename` for some distros which work with your second example. – holzkohlengrill Jun 10 '18 at 14:16
On CentOS Linux 7, I used it as 'rename 'ABC' 'XYZ' *.dat` – Ritesh Aug 08 '18 at 13:35
@user3405291 - this command works better for large number of files, when the original answer fails due to too many arguments of asterisk expansion – Mios Jan 09 '19 at 08:24
1

That was too easy. Awesome. :) For anyone on windows PowerTools has PowerRename that has a lot of options and works really well. – Mats Feb 10 '21 at 10:28

score 165 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 22 '13 at 13:44

165

for file in *.dat ; do mv $file ${file//ABC/XYZ} ; done

No rename or sed needed. Just bash parameter expansion.

answered Jul 22 '13 at 13:44

RJ Alten

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If file names are having space, you should use quote. See snippet below... `for file in *.dat ; do mv "$file" "${file//ABC/XYZ}" ; done` – Haktan Suren Jul 10 '16 at 15:58
1

Works great on OSX – Justin Mitchell Oct 26 '17 at 00:47

score 9 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 08 '09 at 08:57

9

Something like this will do it. The for loop may need to be modified depending on which filenames you wish to capture.

for fspec1 in DET01-ABC-5_50-*.dat ; do
    fspec2=$(echo ${fspec1} | sed 's/-ABC-/-XYZ-/')
    mv ${fspec1} ${fspec2}
done

You should always test these scripts on copies of your data, by the way, and in totally different directories.

answered Sep 08 '09 at 08:57

paxdiablo

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for osx this the stuff. rename looks cool, but a brew install of rename seems to install a perl script which didn't work per the example above. Some googling indicated that rename isn't available on all linux vars and that there is infact a perl version floating about. I got about 10 minutes into trying to sort out the differences and decides - you know this answer is just easy enough :). – j03m Dec 19 '13 at 05:02

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 22 '15 at 07:28

4

You'll need to learn how to use sed http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?sed

And also to use for so you can loop through your file entries http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/bash-for-loop/

Your command will look something like this, I don't have a term beside me so I can't check

for i in `dir` do mv $i `echo $i | sed '/orig/new/g'`

edited Jun 22 '15 at 07:28

Leftium

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answered Sep 08 '09 at 08:47

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 08 '09 at 08:54

1

I like to do this with sed. In you case:

for x in DET01-*.dat; do
    echo $x | sed -r 's/DET01-ABC-(.+)\.dat/mv -v "\0" "DET01-XYZ-\1.dat"/'
done | sh -e

It is best to omit the "sh -e" part first to see what will be executed.

answered Sep 08 '09 at 08:54

stribika

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maybe I am doing something wrong, but this is doing nothing to my files? – not_a_geek Sep 08 '09 at 09:45
Are you trying with or without the "sh -e"? If you are trying without it is not supposed to. It just prints what will be executed ("mv -v ... ..." lines) as a chance to check if everything is ok. If you like what you see add the "sh -e". – stribika Sep 08 '09 at 17:09
and renaming only a part, i.e the extension? I've to rename a lot of .TTF files as .ttf... – user41063 Oct 19 '18 at 21:45

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Feb 03 '22 at 22:34

All of these answers are simple and good. However, I always like to add an interactive mode to these scripts so that I can find false positives.

if [[ -n $inInteractiveMode ]]
then
    echo -e -n "$oldFileName => $newFileName\nDo you want to do this change? [Y/n]: "
    read run

    [[ -z $run || "$run" == "y" || "$run" == "Y" ]] && mv "$oldFileName" "$newFileName"
fi

Or make interactive mode the default and add a force flag (-f | --force) for automated scripts or if you're feeling daring. And this doesn't slow you down too much: the default response is "yes, I do want to rename" so you can just hit the enter key at each prompt (because of the -z $run test.

Renaming part of a filename

6 Answers6

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