how to rename multiple files by replacing string in file name? this string contains a "#"

Question

These mentioned articles have all answered my question. However none of them work for me. I suspect it is because the string I am trying to replace has a # in it. Is there a special way to address this?

I have image file that had an é replaced by #U00a9 during a site migration. These look like this:

Lucky-#U00a9NBC-80x60.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-125x125.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-150x150.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-250x250.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-282x232.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-300x150.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-300x200.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-300x250.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-360x240.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-400x250.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-430x270.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-480x240.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-600x240.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-600x250.jpg
Lucky-#U00a9NBC.jpg

and I want to change it to something like this:

Lucky-safeNBC-80x60.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-125x125.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-150x150.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-250x250.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-282x232.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-300x150.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-300x200.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-300x250.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-360x240.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-400x250.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-430x270.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-480x240.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-600x240.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC-600x250.jpg
Lucky-safeNBC.jpg

UPDATE:

These examples all start with "LU00a9ucky but here are many images with different names. I am simply targeting the "#U00a9" portion of the string to replace with "safe".

So what have you actually tried? I see that you have linked to a few questions and say they failed, but how did they fail? IMO the best example uses the rename command. I suspect your rename would be as simple as rename -n 's/#/safeNBC/' *.jpg. — Zoredache, Dec 19 '14 at 21:26
I tried rename -n 's/#U00a9/safe/' *.jpg and the command was accepted but no changes occurred. — , Dec 19 '14 at 23:36
Sure, as you would have seen from the documentation you surely reviewed, the -n is the no act option. Which lets you see if it works before you actually use it. Did the output on the screen show the potential new names correctly? — Zoredache, Dec 19 '14 at 23:55
I apologize I copied and pasted your example without paying full attention, I did the rename command without the -n. I believe @DTK address the problem, I was not escaping the #. — , Dec 20 '14 at 08:17
Replacing strings in filenames on MacOS: https://superuser.com/questions/152627/renaming-many-files-in-mac-os-x-batch-processing — Anton Tarasenko, Nov 26 '18 at 10:07
For arch (rename from utils-linux 2.34, check using rename -V) you can do: rename expression replacment file e.g. to replace the string foo with bar for all files you do rename 'foo' 'bar' * — xotix, Jan 01 '20 at 16:43

score 171 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 15 '23 at 11:58

171

To replace # by somethingelse for filenames in the current directory (not recursive) you can use the (Perl-)rename utility:

rename  's/#/somethingelse/' *

Characters like - must be escaped with a \.

For your case, you would want to use

rename 's/#U00a9/safe/g' *

Note that if you only want to operate on a certain selection of files, e.g., only *.jpg, adjust the final input to match that selection:

rename 's/#U00a9/safe/g' *.jpg

To perform a test before actually changing filenames, use the -n flag:

demo/> ls                               
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-125x125.jpg  
Lucky-#U00a9NBC-150x150.jpg
demo/> rename -n 's/#U00a9/safe/g' *.jpg
rename(Lucky-#U00a9NBC-125x125.jpg, Lucky-safeNBC-125x125.jpg)
rename(Lucky-#U00a9NBC-150x150.jpg, Lucky-safeNBC-150x150.jpg)

For OS X, rename can be installed using homebrew: brew install rename.

edited Sep 15 '23 at 11:58

AdminBee

22,803

answered Aug 28 '16 at 17:52

KrisWebDev

1,913

5

This did not work on my machine (Arch Linux), but mik's answer did. – marcvangend Apr 21 '17 at 08:14
@marcvangend Which version of rename are you using? # sudo pacman -S perl-rename will install the perl version, which is more powerful and might be enough to make this answer work for you. – John Gowers May 20 '17 at 19:40
@JohnGowers Thanks! I didn't realize there are two versions. On my system, rename --version returns rename from util-linux 2.29.2 so that is indeed not the perl version. – marcvangend May 20 '17 at 21:53
9

There are two common rename utilities but neither of them are developed by GNU: Debian-based distributions include a rename utility with their Perl package while Red Hat-based distributions use the rename utility from the util-linux from the Linux Kernel Organization. Your link is to the rename C function from the GNU standard library. – Anthony Geoghegan Jul 07 '17 at 09:16
4

In this answer, why do we have to write /g in rename 's/#U00a9/safe/g' * – Porcupine Jul 09 '18 at 21:25
No need for all of that, just use option --subst or --subst-all of rename as stated in my answer – lapin Jul 16 '19 at 03:14
1

waiting for the reason for /g as @Nikhil pointed – kokbira Nov 05 '19 at 18:24
In my version of rename (rename from util-linux 2.23.2 from CentOS), the syntax is: rename old new files. E.g.: rename "#" "somethingelse" * – Laurent C. Jan 31 '20 at 08:18
4

/g means global search, i.e. once it finds and replaces an instance of the string, it will keep searching the filename for more instances. So foo_foo.jpg would become bar_bar.jpg. If you didn't put the g, foo_foo.jpg would become bar_foo.jpg instead (only the first instance of 'foo' would change) – Paul Jones Feb 26 '20 at 15:31

score 59 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 03 '16 at 14:46

59

This is not hard, simply make sure to escape the octothorpe (#) in the name by prepending a reverse-slash (\).

find . -type f -name 'Lucky-*' | while read FILE ; do
    newfile="$(echo ${FILE} |sed -e 's/\\#U00a9/safe/')" ;
    mv "${FILE}" "${newfile}" ;
done

edited Jun 03 '16 at 14:46

Community

1

answered Dec 19 '14 at 22:10

Your explanation makes sense, escaping the # sounds like what I need. I do not see a backslash in your example. Should it look like this: s/\#U00a9/safe/ – Dec 19 '14 at 23:45

Sujit Dhamale · Answer 3 · 2019-10-01T04:24:17.227

54

find the list of files and then replace keyword. below is example

find . -name '*jpg' -exec bash -c ' mv $0 ${0/\#U00a9NBC/safeNBC}' {} \;

edited Oct 01 '19 at 04:24

answered Jul 07 '17 at 08:01

Sujit Dhamale

649

5

You need some double-quotes around your mv arguments, in case there are spaces in the name – OrangeDog Oct 03 '18 at 12:52
I needed to replace all files _spec.rb to _controller_spec.rb and your solution worked for me. Thanx. – jedi Sep 21 '19 at 11:36
2

For anyone wondering, yes this is recursive. – Osama Dar Jul 17 '20 at 11:23
It worked. however it is matching all other files and trying to rename/mv files. I.e mv: './jhon-654x1024-100x70.jpg' and './jhon-654x1024-100x70.jpg' are the same file. Probably need little more tweaking to skip trying for files which are outside of match – Arvind K. Sep 12 '21 at 10:10
getting: new target ....... is not a directory for each file it tries to process. – Rasmus Puls Jan 11 '22 at 23:56
Elegant and powerful. – Rubem Pacelli Jan 09 '23 at 21:33

score 40 · Answer 4 · answered Jun 03 '16 at 15:03

40

To escape # from the shell, just use single quotes ('#'), double quotes ("#"), or backslash (\#).

The simplest in your case would be to use the rename command (if it is available):

rename '#U00a9' safe *.jpg

answered Jun 03 '16 at 15:03

mik

1,342

3

Thanks. While the highest voted answer (rename 's/#/somethingelse/' *) didn't work on my machine (Arch Linux), this one did. – marcvangend Apr 21 '17 at 08:13
1

This works using the rename command from util-linux. – imclean May 17 '19 at 04:14
Any reason why neither of these work in Arch Linux in Dec 2022? – lockheed Dec 27 '22 at 09:53
@lockheed, what is the error? do you have the rename executable at all? – mik Dec 30 '22 at 13:37
No error. The command runs without any effect or output. – lockheed Jan 26 '23 at 18:32
@lockheed, maybe your rename is not from util-linux package, the other syntax rename 's/#U00a9/safe/' *.jpg may work in this case – mik Jan 30 '23 at 16:21

Gregory Patmore · Answer 5 · 2016-10-05T16:10:47.103

26

not sure how to in sed, but you can try this in a bash shell:

for f in Lucky-#U00a9NBC-*.jpg; do mv -v "$f" "${f/#U00a9/safe}"; done;

explanation:

loops through all file names matching the glob (Lucky-#U00a9NBC-*.jpg)
renames file using the move command(mv)
uses native bash parameter substitution ${var/Pattern/Replacement} to craft the new name ("${f/#U00a9/safe}")

More on parameter substitution (which is highly underutilized IMO): http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/parameter-substitution.html

edited Oct 05 '16 at 16:10

answered Dec 19 '14 at 22:09

Gregory Patmore

369
2
4

1

this one works for me, on windows using git bash terminal. none of the above worked for me – Rasmus Puls Jan 11 '22 at 23:55

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 15 '18 at 18:36

The above examples were not working on my system (CentOS 5.6) so I found a (possibly more system-specific) command that works (note: need to escape '#' with \ on command line):

rename \#U00a9 safe *.jpg

[Also: I don't have enough reputation yet to comment, so in response to Nikhil's question regarding the use of /g in rename 's/old_string/new_string/g' (posed in the comments for another answer above):

Use the g modifier to perform a 'global' substitution (that is, to substitute new_string for old_string as many times as old_string occurs). This shouldn't be necessary in my answer because the rename will be applied to all files specified with *. See https://www.computerhope.com/unix/rename.htm for a concise explanation of this and other modifiers.]

Correct; Fedora-derived OSes like CentOS have a different version of rename than Debian-derived OSes. See https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/238862/135943. And by the way, CentOS 5.6 is quite old and I recommend you upgrade. — Wildcard, Aug 15 '18 at 19:23
Ah, thanks for the explanation + link. The outdated OS is at work and so it isn't up to me to upgrade :) but a new cluster is being built out and presumably we'll upgrade when we move over... — Ezra Citron, Aug 17 '18 at 17:02

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Jul 16 '19 at 03:10

1

Actually rename has an option exactly for that called --subst or -s in short. No need to use the regex syntax.

rename -s '#U00a9' 'safe' *

If you want to replace/substitute multi occurrences, use --subst-all or -S.

BTW, I only wanted to replace a string by nothing (remove it from file name)... well we also have an option for it -d/--delete and -D/--delete-all:

rename -d '#U00a9' *

answered Jul 16 '19 at 03:10

lapin

299

I'd really like the last part as well. But rename does not have the -d option as far as I can see... Link – Klinghust Apr 27 '21 at 10:22
1

@Klinghust I guess I was talking about the version of rename you get when doing brew install rename on a Mac, which is this one: https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/rename – lapin Sep 07 '23 at 07:00

score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Mar 20 '19 at 13:10

Here's DTK's solution wrapped in reusable bash function:

function renameFilesRecursively () {

  SEARCH_PATH="$1"
  SEARCH="$2"
  REPLACE="$3"

  find ${SEARCH_PATH} -type f -name "*${SEARCH}*" | while read FILENAME ; do
      NEW_FILENAME="$(echo ${FILENAME} | sed -e "s/${SEARCH}/${REPLACE}/g")";
      mv "${FILENAME}" "${NEW_FILENAME}";
  done

}

Here's how you can use it:

renameFilesRecursively /home/user/my-files apple orange

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Nov 30 '19 at 17:37

0

Follow these steps

ls Lucky-#U00a9NBC*.jpg

Will display all jpg file names with Lucky-#U00a9NBC*

rename 's/Lucky-#U00a9NBC/Lucky-safeNBC/' *.jpg

After executing this command every Lucky-#U00a9NBC replace with Lucky-safeNBC.

 ls Lucky-safeNBC*.jpg

You can see all files are renamed

edited Nov 30 '19 at 17:37

bu5hman

4,756

answered Nov 30 '19 at 17:13

Kalana

101

Why are you demonstrating that the pattern Lucky-#U00a9NBC*.jpg matches the names and then you don't use this fact when actually renaming the files? As far as we know, there may be other files matching the *.jpg pattern. – Kusalananda Nov 30 '19 at 17:39

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Nov 30 '19 at 21:50

If you wanted to turn it back to ©, encoded in the locale's charset, you could do with the perl variants of rename (sometimes called prename):

rename '
  use Encode::Locale;
  use Encode;
  s/#U([0-9a-f]{4})/chr hex $1/gie;
  $_ = encode(locale_fs => $_)' ./*'#'[uU]*

score 0 · Answer 11 · edited Sep 14 '23 at 11:39

0

If you are on windows using cygwin, then what works is:

find . -type f -exec rename PhraseToReplace PlaceToReplaceWith {} \;

edited Sep 14 '23 at 11:39

AdminBee

22,803

answered Sep 14 '23 at 06:28

Antoni Papiewski

1

score -1 · Answer 12 · edited Sep 02 '16 at 15:37

-1

Another option is to use pyRenamer, an application made specifically for batch renaming.

It can be installed with sudo apt-get install pyrenamer

For usage details, refer to its README file on GitHub.

edited Sep 02 '16 at 15:37

Julie Pelletier

7,622

answered Sep 02 '16 at 09:06

Sajna T

1

3

If you really think this could answer the question please add some explanation to your answer. Of itself, it only installs a package. You should explain what the command does and provide an example that handles the OP's specific requirement. – Chris Davies Sep 02 '16 at 10:02

how to rename multiple files by replacing string in file name? this string contains a "#"

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