How can I batch rename all files that match a pattern in Linux?

Question

I have folder which contains many .mkv files that I'd like to rename without having to manually do so.

The pattern is this:

...
[XVC]_Control_-_10_-_Doctors_[SCB055Y].mkv
[XVC]_Control_-_11_-_Engineers_[50OPZ00].mkv
...

I'd like the results to be:

...
Control-10-Doctors.mkv
Control-11-Engineers.mkv
...

---

I've tried using find and piping it through sed and tr, but I can't seem to get it to work.

This is what I've tried so far:

find . -iname "*.mkv" -exec sed -e 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' {} \;
find . -type f "*mkv" | sed 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' | tr -d '_'
find . "*.mkv" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i '' -e 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' | tr -d '_'
find . -iname "*.mkv" -exec rename 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' .mkv '{}' \;
find . -iname "*.mkv" -exec rename -n 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' {} ";"

And several others, but none seem to work. I find it puzzling that the command command below works:

(input)
echo '[XVC]_Control_-_10_-_Doctors_[SCB055Y].mkv' | sed 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' | tr -d '_'`
(output)
Control-10-Doctors.mkv

---

EDIT:

$ file $(which rename)
/usr/bin/rename: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2, BuildID[sha1]=d7b5a08ee8556c59dbdda26e998e20d4762c2bbc, for GNU/Linux 3.2.0, stripped

rename -n 's/\[.+?\]//g; s/_//g' *mkv
rename: not enough arguments
Try 'rename --help' for more information.

Answer 1

This will work with perl-rename (called rename or prename or perl-rename depending on your distribution):

$ rename -n 's/\[.*?\]|_//gs' ./*.mkv
[XVC]_Control_-_10_-_Doctors_[SCB055Y].mkv -> Control-10-Doctors.mkv
[XVC]_Control_-_11_-_Engineers_[50OPZ00].mkv -> Control-11-Engineers.mkv

If that gives you the output you want, run it again without the -n to actually rename the files.

Alternatively, write a little loop:

find . -iname "*.mkv" -print0 |
    while IFS= read -rd '' file; do
        newName=$(printf -- '%s\n' "$file" | perl -pe 's/\[.*?\]|_//gs')
        echo mv -- "$file" "$newName"
    done

If that looks right, remove the echo and run it again to actually rename the files.

---

Your commands didn't work for various reasons.

1. find . -iname "*.mkv" -exec sed -e 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' {} \;

   This one is running the sed command on the file itself, so it would only make changes to the file's contents, not the name. And not even that since you aren't using -i which means that it just prints the changed contents to standard output.

2. find . -type f "*mkv" | sed 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' | tr -d '_'

   Here, the find is printing file names but those are just passed as text (a stream) to sed which modfies its input, but doesn't alter the file name. It's the same as echo foo | sed 's/f/b/'. That won't rename a file named foo if one happens to be there.

3. find . "*.mkv" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i '' -e 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' | tr -d '_'

   Here, the sed is being run on the files again, so it is basically the same as above except that it would actually modify the file if any of its contents match. As these are binary files, it is unlikely but not impossible that you have actually modified them.

4. find . -iname "*.mkv" -exec rename 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' .mkv '{}' \;

   This one is actually capable of renaming the files, but since you are passing the string .mkv as the first argument to the rename command, it is trying to rename a file called .mkv. As you presumably have no such file, it does nothing. The second argument, '{}', is ignored. This would have worked:

   find . -iname "*.mkv" -exec rename 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' {} \;
   

   But it would have renamed the files to _Control_-_10_-_Doctors_.mkv and _Control_-_11_-_Engineers_.mkv since you weren't handling the _ in that one.

5. find . -iname "*.mkv" -exec rename -n 's/\[[^][]*\]//g' {} ";"

   This one should have worked! It would just not have done the correct renaming, just as described in 4 above.