Linux: remove file extensions for multiple files

Question

I have many files with .txt extension. How to remove .txt extension for multiple files in linux?

I found that

rename .old .new *.old

substitutes .old extension to the .new

Also I want to do this for files in sub-folders.

I think the title should be: Linux: rename file extensions for multiple files — Roberth Solís, Jul 02 '20 at 06:13
Yep, this definitely lead me here by mistake, this question is about changing the extension not removing it — Tofandel, Mar 25 '21 at 10:29

score 87 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 23 '19 at 09:18

87

rename is slightly dangerous, since according to its manual page:

rename will rename the specified files by replacing the first occurrence of...

It will happily do the wrong thing with filenames like c.txt.parser.y.

Here's a solution using find and bash:

find -type f -name '*.txt' | while read f; do mv "$f" "${f%.txt}"; done

Keep in mind that this will break if a filename contains a newline (rare, but not impossible).

If you have GNU find, this is a more solid solution:

find -type f -name '*.txt' -print0 | while read -d $'\0' f; do mv "$f" "${f%.txt}"; done

edited Apr 23 '19 at 09:18

robsch

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answered Dec 22 '10 at 13:14

thkala

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That's true regarding the `util-linux-ng` version of `rename`, but the Perl script version can do `rename 's/.txt$//' *.txt` – Dennis Williamson Dec 22 '10 at 15:34
1

you are missing current "." as for the location where you want to run in. maybe this is my osx variant of find, or my path is not set correctly – bgs Aug 09 '13 at 17:29
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@bgs: most (all?) Linux distributions use GNU find, which defaults to . when no argument has been specified – thkala Aug 09 '13 at 22:02
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yes, don't forget the directory specifier if you are on Mac. e.g. `find . -type f -name '*.txt' | while read f; do mv "$f" "${f%.txt}"; done` – lolski Oct 25 '13 at 08:27
Why is the second one more solid than the first one? – Oct 05 '18 at 07:12

score 25 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 05 '13 at 18:05

25

I use this:

find ./ -name "*.old" -exec sh -c 'mv $0 `basename "$0" .old`.new' '{}' \;

answered Jun 05 '13 at 18:05

Chris Cowan

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thank you, I didn't know this syntax, and it works also on MacOSX (which lacks native `rename` ). – Utopik Jul 15 '13 at 08:47
You should have added the dirname in case target is in a subfolder : find ./ -name "*.old" -exec sh -c 'mv $0 `dirname "$0"`/`basename "$0" .old`.new' '{}' \; – Séverin May 29 '17 at 08:10

Andrew S · Answer 3 · 2013-11-06T23:24:39.267

17

The Perl version of rename can remove an extension as follows:

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

This could be combined with find in order to also do sub-folders.

edited Nov 06 '13 at 23:24

answered Nov 06 '13 at 19:41

Andrew S

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score 10 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 22 '10 at 13:11

10

You can explicitly pass in an empty string as an argument.

rename .old '' *.old

And with subfolders, find . -type d -exec rename .old '' {}/*.old \;. {} is the substitute for the entry found with find, and \; terminates the arglist for the command given after -exec.

answered Dec 22 '10 at 13:11

robert

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I don't know what version of `rename` you used there, but it doesn't work here on the Debian version, which is a perl script that uses regex for the arguments. This works: `$ rename 's/\.old//' *.old` – paradroid Jun 22 '21 at 16:13

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jun 05 '17 at 07:53

In case it helps, here's how I do it with zsh:

for f in ./**/*.old; do
    mv "${f}" "${f%.old}"
done

The ${x%pattern} construct in zsh removes the shortest occurence of pattern at the end of $x. Here it is abstracted as a function:

function chgext () {
    local srcext=".old"
    local dstext=""
    local dir="."

    [[ "$#" -ge 1 ]] && srcext="$1"
    [[ "$#" -gt 2 ]] && dstext="$2" dir="$3" || dir="${2:-.}"

    local bname=''
    for f in "${dir}"/**/*"${srcext}"; do
        bname="${f%${srcext}}"
        echo "${bname}{${srcext} → ${dstext}}"
        mv "${f}" "${bname}${dstext}"
    done
}

Usage:

chgext
chgext src
chgext src dir
chgext src dst dir

Where `src` is the extension to find (default: ".old")
      `dst` is the extension to replace with (default: "")
      `dir` is the directory to act on (default: ".")

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 02 '16 at 20:05

2

In Fish, you can do

for file in *.old
      touch (basename "$file" .old).new
end

answered Aug 02 '16 at 20:05

Bruno Alano

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score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 22 '10 at 13:12

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For subfolders:

for i in `find myfolder -type d`; do
  rename .old .new $i/*.old
done

answered Dec 22 '10 at 13:12

Konrad Garus

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This can cause problems if there's a folder name with a space in it. – robert Dec 22 '10 at 13:38

score 1 · Answer 8 · edited Mar 03 '19 at 06:56

1

execute in bash linux

for i in *;do mv ${i} ${i/%.pdf/} ;done

edited Mar 03 '19 at 06:56

Dmitry

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answered Mar 03 '19 at 06:34

shahin aref

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Linux: remove file extensions for multiple files

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