How to quickly rename a bunch of files in the folder

Question

I have a bunch of files that are named 'something_12345.doc' (any 5-digit number, not necessarily 12345). I need to rename them all to just 'something.doc'. This is a Unix filesystem, and I suspect there's a way to do this with just one command... Can any Unix regular expressions guru help?

Thanks!

You'll be left with one file, basically, you are deleting N-1 files and copying the Nth file to `something.doc` -- Is this what you want? — dirkgently, Jan 28 '10 at 18:29

ghostdog74 · Answer 1 · 2010-01-29T00:18:57.230

3

@OP, the shell has already expanding your pattern for you, there in your mv statement, you don't have to specify the pattern for 5 digits again.

for file in *_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].doc
do
  echo mv "$file" "${file%_*}.doc"
done

edited Jan 29 '10 at 00:18

answered Jan 29 '10 at 00:08

ghostdog74

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Thanks ghostdog74 & everyone else! – user261231 Jan 29 '10 at 06:25

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

3

This question was asked a lot of times on SO:

My personal preference goes to mmv. But see "Mass Rename/copy/link Tools".

edited May 23 '17 at 10:29

Community

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answered Jan 30 '10 at 21:29

bortzmeyer

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 28 '10 at 18:34

2

rename 's/_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]//' *.doc

answered Jan 28 '10 at 18:34

bhups

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I'm on FreeBSD, so this doesn't work.. bash: /usr/local/bin/rename: Argument list too long I can't figure out how to set variables for rename – user261231 Jan 28 '10 at 21:34
Figured it out. for i in [A-Za-z]*_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9].doc; do mv "$i" "${i/_[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]}"; done – user261231 Jan 28 '10 at 22:14

score 1 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 17 '13 at 08:21

1

use sed

ls *.doc | sed 's:\([^0-9_]\)[0-9_][0-9_]*\.doc:$(mv & \1.doc)' | /bin/bash

edited Feb 17 '13 at 08:21

Igor Jerosimić

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answered Feb 17 '13 at 08:02

mohitgupta

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score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 28 '10 at 18:27

0

Yes, rename takes perl style regular expressions. Do a man rename.

answered Jan 28 '10 at 18:27

dirkgently

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Not always. On RH systems it does a simple string replacement. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jan 30 '10 at 22:38

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 16 '16 at 08:51

0

On FreeBSD, you might be interested in the sysutils/renameutils port. The command qmv opens your $EDITOR and allows you to specify all file renames in a reasonably comfortable environment. I personally prefer the qmv -fdo (single column) format.

answered Jan 16 '16 at 08:51

jkerian

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How to quickly rename a bunch of files in the folder

6 Answers6