Ubuntu – Using text list to batch-rename files

batch-renamecommand line

Suppose I have a folder with some 20 files (say, photos I took on a trip), and I want to rename them in one go, only there isn't any specific Perl expression I want to use (for example, if I'd like to add additional text to each name that's not part of the individual files' meta-data, such as descriptions and/or comments).

And suppose I can more easily generate a text file with what I want each file's name to be (or, if preferable, a 'before-and-after' sort of list).

Is there any way to apply the changes implied in that text list to the folder in question?

Best Answer

This looks like a job for xargs.

If your file is formatted like this:

old_file1 new_file1
old_file2 new_file2

then you can do xargs -a your_file -n 2 mv.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Batch rename with id shifting

constant=42
for f in *.txt; do    # choose your pattern as appropriate.
    IFS='-.' read id suffix ext <<< "$f"
    newname="$(( 10#$id + constant ))-yyy.$ext"
    echo mv "$f" "$newname"
done

I added "10#" in the arithmetic expression to ensure the number is treated as base-10 even if it begins with a zero.

If this doesn't meet your needs, please provide more requirements in the question.

Ubuntu – Batch rename files to lowercase

For each file a_file in current directory rename a_file to lower case.

for a_file in *;do mv -v "$a_file" `echo "$a_file" | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]` ;done;

For upper case reverse the arguments to [:lower:] [:upper:]

tr command reference link

Update

For even more control * can be replaced with ls.

For example in a directory containing 1.txt, 2.txt, 3.txt, 1.jpg, 2.jpg and 3.jpg in order to filter only *.jpg files, ls can be used:

for a_file in $(ls *.jpg);do mv -v $a_file `echo $a_file | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]` ;done;

The above code will assign to a_file variable all files with .jpg extension.

Update added -v option to mv command as per sds suggested.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Batch rename with id shifting

Ubuntu – Batch rename files to lowercase

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