bash script to rename all files in a directory? - linux

Question

i have bunch of files that needs to be renamed.
file1.txt needs to be renamed to file1_file1.txt
file2.avi needs to be renamed to file2_file2.avi
as you can see i need the _ folowed by the original file name.
there are lot of these files.

Answer 1

So far all the answers given either:
Require some non-portable tool
Break horribly with filenames containing spaces or newlines
Is not recursive, i.e. does not descend into sub-directories
These two scripts solve all of those problems.
Bash 2.X/3.X
#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' file; do
dirname="${file%/*}/"
basename="${file:${#dirname}}"
echo mv "$file" "$dirname${basename%.*}_$basename"
done < <(find . -type f -print0)
Bash 4.X
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s globstar
for file in ./**; do
if [[ -f "$file" ]]; then
dirname="${file%/*}/"
basename="${file:${#dirname}}"
echo mv "$file" "$dirname${basename%.*}_$basename"
fi
done
Be sure to remove the echo from whichever script you choose once you are satisfied with it's output and run it again
Edit
Fixed problem in previous version that did not properly handle path names.

Answer 2

For your specific case, you want to use mmv as follows:
pax> ll
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 2 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:47 .
drwxrwxrwx+ 5 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:39 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:39 file1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:39 file2.avi
pax> mmv '*.*' '#1_#1.#2'
pax> ll
total 0
drwxr-xr-x+ 2 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:47 .
drwxrwxrwx+ 5 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:39 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:39 file1_file1.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 allachan None 0 Dec 24 09:39 file2_file2.avi
You need to be aware that the wildcard matching is not greedy. That means that the file a.b.txt will be turned into a_a.b.txt, not a.b_a.b.txt.
The mmv program was installed as part of my CygWin but I had to
sudo apt-get install mmv
on my Ubuntu box to get it down. If it's not in you standard distribution, whatever package manager you're using will hopefully have it available.
If, for some reason, you're not permitted to install it, you'll have to use one of the other bash for-loop-type solutions shown in the other answers. I prefer the terseness of mmv myself but you may not have the option.

Answer 3

for file in file*.*
do
[ -f "$file" ] && echo mv "$file" "${file%%.*}_$file"
done
Idea for recursion
recurse() {
for file in "$1"/*;do
if [ -d "$file" ];then
recurse "$file"
else
# check for relevant files
# echo mv "$file" "${file%%.*}_$file"
fi
done
}
recurse /path/to/files

Answer 4

find . -type f | while read FN; do
BFN=$(basename "$FN")
NFN=${BFN%.*}_${BFN}
echo "$BFN -> $NFN"
mv "$FN" "$NFN"
done

Answer 5

I like the PERL cookbook's rename script for this. It may not be /bin/sh but you can do regular expression-like renames.
The /bin/sh method would be to use sed/cut/awk to alter each filename inside a for loop. If the directory is large you'd need to rely on xargs.

Answer 6

One should mention the mmv tool, which is especially made for this.
It's described here: http://tldp.org/LDP/GNU-Linux-Tools-Summary/html/mass-rename.html
...along with alternatives.

Answer 7

I use prename (perl based), which is included in various linux distributions. It works with regular expressions, so to say change all img_x.jpg to IMAGE_x.jpg you'd do
prename 's/img_/IMAGE_/' img*jpg
You can use the -n flag to preview changes without making any actual changes.
prename man entry

Answer 8

#!/bin/bash
# Don't do this like I did:
# files=`ls ${1}`
for file in *.*
do
if [ -f $file ];
then
newname=${file%%.*}_${file}
mv $file $newname
fi
done
This one won't rename sub directories, only regular files.