Quickest way to rename files, without retyping directory path

Question

I know how to rename files in Unix:

$ mv ~/folder/subfolder/file.txt ~/folder/subfolder/file.sh

     ^-------this part------^    ^------this part-------^

It takes too long time to repeat ~/folder/subfolder/file twice.

Is there a quicker way?

score 111 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

111

If your shell supported Brace Expansion (works with csh, tcsh, ksh, zsh, bash, mksh, lksh, pdksh, yash with brace-expand enabled by calling yash --brace-expand or set in interative shell with set -o brace-expand, or fish):

mv ~/folder/subfolder/file.{txt,sh}

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

Community

1

answered May 27 '14 at 16:12

cuonglm

153,898

4

simple is the best! – Braiam May 27 '14 at 18:05
2

awesome use of expansion in shell brilliant! – harish.venkat May 27 '14 at 18:10
3

It is awesome, but really cryptic. It works but at the first glance I would think it does something different: moves two file somewhere. I don't think this is a great idea, especially since there is a much better solution using rename. – yo' May 28 '14 at 21:07
5

@tohecz: Why is it cryptic? It's a feature of shell and every one can know it by reading shell man page. And I don't think rename is a better solution because rename never ask you to override the existing file or not. – cuonglm May 29 '14 at 02:32
1

@Gnouc you're the man. – beginer Sep 01 '14 at 12:26
This worked in Ubuntu 18 without needing to enable any extensions. – Shital Shah Jan 26 '20 at 01:43
1

using this, how would I rename ~/fruits/bananas_and_mangos into ~/fruits/pineapples_and_mangos ? – Salomanuel Mar 17 '22 at 15:16

score 23 · Answer 2 · edited May 27 '14 at 22:21

23

You can also use rename (part of the util-linux package).

rename .txt .sh ~/folder/subfolder/file.txt

See the rename man page for more details.

edited May 27 '14 at 22:21

ctrl-alt-delor

27,993

answered May 27 '14 at 16:24

jofel

26,758

+1 This is the clear way how to do it, much better than relying on shells {a,b} functionality. – yo' May 28 '14 at 21:02
5

In some Linux distros (such as Ubuntu), rename is an entirely different, perl-based program. There, you would use rename 's/txt$/sh/' ~/folder/subfolder/file.txt. – evilsoup Oct 04 '14 at 09:34
1

On Debian (and Ubuntu), there is also mmv. – ctrl-alt-delor Apr 13 '18 at 13:13
@ctrl-alt-delor mmv doesn't work in Ubuntu. Even after installing using sudo apt, this command just hangs and doesn't do anything. – Shital Shah Jan 26 '20 at 01:40
@ShitalShah how did you call it? What arguments? – ctrl-alt-delor Jan 26 '20 at 07:39
@ctrl-alt-delor Deinstall mtools. – jofel Jan 27 '20 at 07:10
@jofel use your words. – ctrl-alt-delor Jan 27 '20 at 17:28

score 10 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '18 at 13:14

10

All the above are good. This would also work :

( cd ~/folder/subfolder && mv file.txt file.sh )

edited Apr 13 '18 at 13:14

ctrl-alt-delor

27,993

answered May 27 '14 at 16:31

Bjorn

127

No. It doesn't work for me! – Hamed Kamrava May 27 '14 at 16:35
It will work if you remove the sudo part. – Cthulhu May 27 '14 at 17:03
1

@Cthulhu Yes your right. But why doesn't work with sudo? – Hamed Kamrava May 27 '14 at 17:29
2

@HamedKamrava Probably because with sudo it interprets ~ as the root's home directory. – Cthulhu May 28 '14 at 04:41
You can sudo the mv, but not cd. See why cd is a shell built in. And you can not sudo the ( – ctrl-alt-delor Apr 13 '18 at 13:17
shame that the autocomplete would not work for the name of the file – Salomanuel Mar 17 '22 at 15:18

terdon · Answer 4 · 2014-10-04T09:20:59.623

8

No. You need to give the full path to the file in order to rename it. The only alternative is to move into the target folder before running the mv:

cd ~/folder/subfolder/
mv file.txt file.sh

Alternatively, you could write a little function that renames the file in the target directory. For example, add these lines to your shell initialization file (~/.bashrc if you are using bash):

lmv(){
    _path=$(dirname -- "$1")
    _target="${_path%/}/$2"
    mv -- "$1" "$_target"
}

Then, open a new terminal or just run source ~/.bashrc to re-read the init file and you can do:

lmv ~/folder/subfolder/file.txt file.sh

edited Oct 04 '14 at 09:20

answered May 27 '14 at 16:12

terdon

242,166

+1 for lmv() function. I didn't know that :) – Hamed Kamrava May 27 '14 at 16:20
1

@HamedKamrava nobody knew it. I just wrote it, it's not anything standard. – terdon May 27 '14 at 16:22
2

I know. I mean I didn't know I can write my own function! – Hamed Kamrava May 27 '14 at 16:23

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 13 '18 at 12:58

Just to expand the usefulness of cuonglm's answer (NOT to take any credit as I love his solution) and his answer is a correct one.

The use case is that we often want to mv a file in a remote location (the real issue), e.g. /folder/subfolder/configFile.dat TO configFile.dat.orig

This form of the command adds a file extension (not replacing the original extension)

mv ~/folder/subfolder/file.txt{,.orig}

Explained: "{,.orig}" means replace (nothing) on the end of the file name with (something) ".orig"

OR to remove a file extension (reverse the rename)

mv ~/folder/subfolder/file.txt{.orig,}

Note: Still on topic for "Quickest way to rename files without retyping the dir path"

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered May 27 '14 at 16:13

1

Yes. If you use bash, you do sudo pushd ~/folder/subfolder/ && sudo mv ./file.txt ./file.sh && popd.

Which is actually bigger and may fail if you lost access permissions to the original directory when you did the popd.

answered May 27 '14 at 16:13

41754

95

1

What's the point of pushd and popd here? How is this better than cd ~/folder/subfolder/ && sudo mv file.txt file.sh? – terdon May 27 '14 at 16:20
1

The point is, that you are after the command back in the folder you started, not in any subfolder. An alternative to pushd popd is to use cd and go back with cd -. – jofel May 27 '14 at 16:27
The questioner seemed to state an intention not to change the working directory, and popd is better than cd ../../, when available. – 41754 May 27 '14 at 16:32
7

Use (cd /path/to/there && mv x y) then (with a subshell) – Stéphane Chazelas May 27 '14 at 16:39
You really should not put sudo before pushd. So the full command should be pushd ...dir && sudo mv old new && popd. As an alternative, one could do (cd ...dir; sudo mv old new) because running in subshell will take care of directory changes automatically. – Mikko Rantalainen Mar 12 '19 at 11:38

Quickest way to rename files, without retyping directory path

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