Tools For Renaming Files In Linux

In this video tutorial, I show several different methods for renaming files on Linux, including how to do more advanced things like bulk renaming, pattern substitutions, and changing lowercase to uppercase and vice versa.

In this video, I mention several programs that I have made videos about, so be sure to check out:

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[nikolaizombie]

In bash there is a built in way to do the seq 10 | xargs command, it's called brace expansion. For example touch {1..12}.txt creates 12 files with the file sames 1 through 12.

[lawrencedoliveiro]

7:15 Tip for the find command: start by putting an “echo” as the first word after -exec, so it prints out the command instead of executing it. That helps you ensure it will do the right thing before turning it loose.

[Danielddiniz]

Just here watching my favorite Linux YT channel! Thanks for the video Derek!

[phrtao]

Just a little aside - I worked for 10 years writing document management software and part of what I did was enforcing good naming conventions. It always amazed me just how lazy everyone was when it came to naming files even when legally required to do so. Despite having tools to do the work (scripts and applications) most files were still stored with non-descript default file names in arbitrary locations. The only time files were ever named appropriately was when they were automatically generated, even then the naming conventions still varied. File naming and location is still a big problem and people still believe that content searching will solve all their problems.

[atps]

Great and useful video. I usually rename single files with mv and bulk rename with vimv.

[FirstLast-cyog]

i have been fiddling with automating with bulk rename for several years. Glad someone tinkers with same things I do

[NOMAD]

Thanks for showing this kind of stuff. I've been using Linux a long time and still haven't learned bash very well.

[xrafter]

You are a week late my friend, but never late than never.

Thanks for this video.

[gseidler]

You missed my favorite bulk rename tool. Vidir from Moreutils. Also uses Vim to rename but more flexible than Vifm since you can pipe find results into it and can also at the same time move your files if you alter the file path along with the name.

[sbr]

This is the best Linux channel to follow if you want to be a power user👍

[bassernx]

Probably worth noting that mv standard behavior is overwriting.

[richardlesperance]

My rant on the linux community was not aimed at you! It was just a general hit!

[kevinkane]

Qmv is a great terminal tool for renaming files

[scheimong]

A few days ago I needed to rename a bunch of files to randomly generated names but I didn't find an existing tool to do it, so I wrote a tool myself. It's a really niche need but if you ever want it for whatever reason, it's called rng-rename on GitHub. Written in rust too so hopefully that'll make aficionados happy

[lawrencedoliveiro]

One command I have used a fair bit is mmv. That does its own recognition of shell-style wildcards, substituting them into the output pattern. E.g.

mmv -v '*.TXT' '#1.txt'

renames files ending with .TXT to corresponding .txt, telling you what it’s renaming as it goes. It also provides the “-n” option, where it shows you what it would do without doing it.

[marioschroers]

My go-to is the batch rename feature in nnn where you simply use a vim buffer.

[KyleLanmon]

I'm triggered that you did not use i as your loop variable in the for loop example

[Zeratulable]

damn bro, I wish you uploaded this a few days ago LOL

[diemanich]

Double commander is most convenient tool for batch renaming of files. And it's basically most convenient file manager.

[janvojtko]

Once I spent the whole night trying to rename and sort images which I imported from my phone. They were pictures of school notes and some of them were incorrect orientation or incorrect order. Too bad you didn't show something like that, e.g. bulk image rotation or some sorting etc. Or when you have a list of files named 1.txt - 100.txt and you remove one file in the middle of the list, the rest of the files gets renamed