How to rename multiple files in a directory at the same time

Question

I have directory say /var/tmp/abc which has 4 files:

12345-ram-3e3r5-io9490-89adu9.csv
45434-dam-qwe35-to9490-43adu9.csv
11234-cam-yy3r5-ro9490-85adu9.csv
14423-sam-hh3r5-uo9490-869du9.csv

I want to rename all the CSV files (find all the files & rename them) in shortest possible (probably one-liner) way to this:

XXXXX-ram-3e3r5-io9490-89adu9.csv
XXXXX-dam-qwe35-to9490-43adu9.csv
XXXXX-cam-yy3r5-ro9490-85adu9.csv
XXXXX-sam-hh3r5-uo9490-869du9.csv

Answer 1

rename -n 's/(\w+)/XXXXX/' *.csv

remove the -n when happy.

Answer 2

Try:

for f in *.csv; do mv -i -- "$f" "XXXXX-${f#*-}"; done

How it works:

• for f in *.csv; do

  This starts a loop over all *.csv files.

• mv -i -- "$f" "XXXXX-${f#*-}"

  This renames the files as you want, asking interactively before overwriting any file.

• done

  This marks the end of the loop.

Example:

$ ls -1
11234-cam-yy3r5-ro9490-85adu9.csv
12345-ram-3e3r5-io9490-89adu9.csv
14423-sam-hh3r5-uo9490-869du9.csv
45434-dam-qwe35-to9490-43adu9.csv
$ for f in *.csv; do mv -i -- "$f" "XXXXX-${f#*-}"; done
$ ls -1
XXXXX-cam-yy3r5-ro9490-85adu9.csv
XXXXX-dam-qwe35-to9490-43adu9.csv
XXXXX-ram-3e3r5-io9490-89adu9.csv
XXXXX-sam-hh3r5-uo9490-869du9.csv

Answer 3

I'm assuming that all your files starts with 5 numeric characters, so using the cut command to replace the initial numeric files by "XXXXX".

Below, the files before the command.

-rw-rw-r--. 1 daniel daniel 0 May 13 23:18 11111_bar_file.csv
-rw-rw-r--. 1 daniel daniel 0 May 13 22:54 12345_baz_file.csv
-rw-rw-r--. 1 daniel daniel 0 May 13 22:54 67890_foo_file.xml

Below, the one liner command.

for src in *.csv; do dst=XXXXX$(echo $src| cut -c6-); mv $src $dst; done;

Below, the files after the command.

-rw-rw-r--. 1 daniel daniel 0 May 13 22:54 67890_foo_file.xml
-rw-rw-r--. 1 daniel daniel 0 May 13 22:54 XXXXX_bar_file.csv
-rw-rw-r--. 1 daniel daniel 0 May 13 23:18 XXXXX_baz_file.csv

References:

Looping through command output in bash

Substrings in bash

Answer 4

no forks:

ls | perl -lne '$suf=substr($_,6); rename $_, "XXXXX-$suf"'

When you use a shell loop, the mv forks once per file. Perl's rename command does not.

(Perl's rename command has some restrictions, but in this specific case those restrictions don't apply.)

As for the rename command shown earlier, yes that works, but then you have all that confusion between two different kinds of rename and so on. If you have the right one, great, but if not, this works too.

If you don't have the perl-rename command and can't install it, you can just do this:

ls | perl -lne '$old=$_; s/(\w+)/XXXXX/; rename $old, $_'

As you can see, this uses the same substitution shown in the top answer. Of course the perl-rename has other bells and whistles (the top answer mentioned, -n already, then there's -0, -f, and so on), and the more of them you need, the more you should install that instead of rolling your own in this manner.