Possible Duplicate:
Renaming multiple files (changing extension)
Suppose that in my current/working directory I have five files:
file1.xvg
file2.xvg
file3.xvg
file1.eps
file2.eps
Is there any way that I can rename all files in the current/working directory with the extension .xvg and give them the new extension .txt (leaving the .eps files alone)? Can this be done with rename, mv, or mmv perhaps? I am using Ubuntu Linux. Thanks!
For your particular question this command will work. Verify that you are happy with the proposed renaming, then drop the -n to have the operation proceed.
rename -n 's/\.xvg$/.txt/' *.xvg
This basically means for all files with the .xvg extension in the current directory find the files that end ($) with .xvg and change that part of the name to .txt.
More detail and an example below.
Yes, the rename command will do this for you. A short example where I rename all of my files with the .html extension to .html_bak, ignoring other files in the directory.
I would strongly recommend using the -n command line option first (explained below) to see what changes would happen before executing the actual command.
What I start out with:
$ ls
a.html a.txt b.html htmlfile
the -n means do a "trial run" .. just show what would change, don't change anything!
$ rename -n 's/\.html$/.html_bak/' *
a.html renamed as a.html_bak
b.html renamed as b.html_bak
Still have the original files.
$ ls
a.html a.txt b.html htmlfile
Now for real:
$ rename 's/\.html$/.html_bak/' *
Files have been renamed.
$ ls
a.html_bak a.txt b.html_bak htmlfile
In the above examples I use * to specify the files to be considered for the rename operation. I could have restricted this to .html files only with *.html.
For more information consult the rename man page
This can be done like this:
rename 's/xvg$/txt/' *.xvg
The glob pattern ensures that only *.xvg files are affected.
