Rename all the files within a folder with prefix “Unix_”

Question

Rename all the files within a folder with prefix “Unix_” i.e. suppose a folder has two files a.txt and b.pdf than they both should be renamed from a single command to Unix_a.txt and Unix_b.pdf

I would call it a prefix, not a suffix. – jlliagre May 14 '11 at 04:53 — jlliagre, May 14 '11 at 04:53

score 16 · Answer 1 · answered May 14 '11 at 05:21

16

$ for f in * ; do mv "$f" Unix_"$f" ; done

answered May 14 '11 at 05:21

Warren Young

72,032

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered May 14 '11 at 05:21

8

The rename command can rename files using regular expressions, which makes it very powerful. In your case, you could do

rename 's/(.*)/Unix_$1/' *.txt

answered May 14 '11 at 05:21

dj_segfault

193

... and the pdf-File? :) – user unknown May 15 '11 at 03:40
rename 's/(.*)/Unix_$1/' *.pdf – fromnaboo Jul 03 '12 at 01:51
1

No need to capture, just replace the beggining-of-string: rename 's/^/Unix_/' *.pdf – mmoya Nov 12 '13 at 23:03
this doesn't work for filenames starting with - which leads to the error Unknown option:... – mcExchange Jun 14 '20 at 13:09
@mcExchange , have you tried with -- option? Normally, all standard utilities support the end of option processing option "double-dash". Just in case, there's also krename, and mrename. More with apt search rename if available, including repository source lists. – Artfaith Nov 05 '23 at 02:03

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered May 14 '11 at 08:31

3

If you're using Zsh as your shell, you could also use the function zmv.

Add this line to your .zshrc:

autoload -U zmv

then you could run:

% zmv -W '*' 'Unix_*'

See man zshcontrib for further information.

answered May 14 '11 at 08:31

yibe

481

The more I read about zsh, the more I like it. – boehj May 15 '11 at 03:34

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered May 14 '11 at 19:52

3

With the rename utility included in the util-linux package (the one on dj_segfault's answer comes from perl), you could do rename '' Unix_ *

answered May 14 '11 at 19:52

Random832

10,666

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

0

~~Some of the other answers might be better however, if I thought that xargs deserved a mention since it is a very powerful tool (and on many systems):~~

In this particular you could do:

ls | xargs -n1 -I{} mv {} Unix_{}

Edit: Retracted per Gilles' comment. For this situation this solution should be considered only a hack due to the caveats as pointed out by the cited article. The other answers are much better. I still think that xargs is still a useful tool (I use it with svn status relatively frequently), but he's right, for simple execute some command on all files in a tree of directories, this isn't the answer and find is much better. (Leaving the answer since the I think the comment is good for people who'd make the same mistake).

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered May 14 '11 at 22:26

Charlie

101

2

Don't parse the output of ls. xargs is actually rarely useful, especially now that find … -exec … + exists. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' May 14 '11 at 23:11
Thanks @Gilles that's a good article. Edited retracting my answer. – Charlie May 15 '11 at 01:55

Rename all the files within a folder with prefix “Unix_”

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