Rename all files which contain the sub-string ‘foo’, replacing it with ‘bar’
Source: commandlinefu.com
Terminal – Rename all files which contain the sub-string ‘foo’, replacing it with ‘bar’
for i in ./*foo*;do mv -- "$i" "${i//foo/bar}";done
That is an alternative to command 8368.
Command 8368 is EXTREMELY NOT clever.
- Will break also for files with spaces AND new lines in them AND for an empty expansion of the glob ‘*’
- For making such a simple task it uses two pipes, thus forking.
- xargs(1) is dangerous (broken) when processing filenames that are not NUL-terminated.
- ls shows you a representation of files. They are NOT file names (for simple names, they mostly happen to be equivalent). Do NOT try to parse it.
Why? see this :http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs
Recursive version:
find . -depth -name "*foo*" -exec bash -c 'for f; do base=${f##*/}; mv -- "$f" "${f%/*}/${base//foo/bar}"; done' _ {} +
Alternatives
ls * | sed -e 'p;s/foo/bar/' | xargs -n2 mv
Renames all files in a directory named foo to bar.
- foobar1 gets renamed to barbar1
- barfoo2 gets renamed to barbar2
- fooobarfoo gets renamed to barobarfoo
NOTE: Will break for files with spaces AND new lines AND for an empty expansion of the glob ‘*’
rename 's/foo/bar/g' ./* $ ls
thisFileIsCalledDAVE
$ rename 's/DAVE/PETE/g' ./*
$ ls
thisFileIsCalledPETEWould this command line achieve the desired function? My CLI knowledge is not great so this could certainly be wrong. It is merely a suggestion for more experienced uses to critique. Best wishes roly 🙂
for f in *; do mv "$f" "${f/foo/bar}"; donewithout sed, but has no problems with files with spaces or other critical characters
ls | sed 'p;s/foo/bar/' | xargs -n2 mv
rename foo bar directory/filename
rename command in my system -Fuduntu running 2.6.38 Linux Kernel- is an ELF 64-bit LSB executable, not a Perl script. man page for rename command shows syntax as “rename from to where” (or something like that), so I am doing just what I have been told…