Changing file extensions

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Renaming multiple files (changing extension)

Suppose I have a bunch of files with the extension .x and I want to change them so that they have the extension .y. I know $ mv *.x *.y wouldn't work because I havn't expressed each file to change their respective extensions (that and the command expects *.y to be a directory).

What command should I issue?

See also: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/19654/renaming-multiple-files-changing-extension & http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/6777/how-to-clean-up-file-extensions — jasonwryan, Sep 26 '11 at 01:48

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 26 '11 at 01:46

2

You can use rename to rename files based on a pattern, and one of the examples from the man page is changing the extension of a group of files. It takes the source pattern, modified pattern, and the files to operate on, so in your case:

$ rename .x .y *.x

It changes the first occurrence of .x to .y, so if you happen to have .x anywhere other than the end of the filename it's going to change that first

answered Sep 26 '11 at 01:46

Michael Mrozek

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I get this:
$ rename .x .y *.x Transliteration pattern not terminated at (eval 1) line 2.

However 's/.x/.y/' as a pattern seems to work.
– oadams Sep 26 '11 at 01:55
You have to take into account the difference between Red Hat rename and Debian rename. And then there are Unices that have neither. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Sep 26 '11 at 02:32
1

That's annoyingly distro-specific... – Michael Mrozek Sep 26 '11 at 02:34

Changing file extensions

1 Answers1