Change File Extension with rename rename 's/\.bak$/\.txt/' *.bak The Perl rename command uses Regular Expressions to define the renaming operations to be performed. There are multiple programs called rename – the one used in this article specifically is the Perl rename utility available in many package managers. …or on RedHat/Fedora based systems by running: sudo dnf install prename It is not always installed by default and can be installed on Ubuntu/Debian by running: sudo apt install rename The rename command is another tool built specifically for renaming multiple files. There are some more examples of how mmv can re-arrange file names in the Ubuntu documentation. bak file extension: mmv \*.txt \#1.bak Replacing Text / Changing Extensions in Filenames with mmv ![]() Changing the File Extension of Multiple Files with mmv …or you can check out the examples below to see how it’s used. You can view the full user manual for the mmv command by running: man mmv …or on RedHat/Fedora based systems by running: sudo yum install mmv It may not be installed on your system by default – it can be installed on Ubuntu/Debian based systems by running: sudo apt install mmv Mmv ( Mass Move and Rename) does what it says on the tin – it’s a tool for moving or renaming multiple files simultaneously. If a while loop is used instead of a for loop, the iteration can be used to name files sequentially: ls -v | cat -n | while read num file do mv -n "$file" "$num.ext" done How to Rename Multiple Files with mmv In addition, the current date will be appended in the given format. Note that in this case, the directory the files are stored in is specified. The following line does just that: for file in /path/to/directory/* do mv $file $file-`date %m%d%y` done ![]() It’s common to want to add the current date to many files – if you’re replacing or moving or backing them up. bak extension appended to their filename. Similarly, the list of files returned by the ls command can be limited with wildcards, which can be used to limit the files which will be renamed: for file in $( ls *.txt ) do mv $file $file.bak doneĪbove, only files with names matching the pattern *.txt have the. This could also be used to remove the file extension by simply removing the. Rather than adding text, text can be replaced: for file in *.txt do mv - "$file" "$.bak" doneĪbove, the text. Change the File Extension of All Files in a Directory bak extension is added to each file name. The files are then iterated over using a for loop, and the. The ls command lists the contents of the current directory. The following command will add a file extension (or can be used to append any text to the file name) to all files in the current directory: for file in $( ls ) do mv $file $file.bak done The best way to illustrate how this combination of the for loop and mv command is with some examples: Add a File Extension/Append Text to All File Names in a Directory ![]() The mv command is available on all Linux systems and is the most practical way of renaming files as it doesn’t rely on any additional software packages being present. To use it to rename more than one file at a time, a for loop statement can be used to iterate over multiple files and execute the mv command on each to rename them.Ĭheck out this article for more ways to use the Bash for loop. It moves and renames files and directories. How to Rename Multiple Files with mvįirst up, the mv command. ![]() Read on to find out what those tools are and how they can be used.Įach tool has differences in how the renaming operations are defined which makes them appropriate for different scenarios.īefore trying out any of these commands, make sure you’ve backed up your files, just in case something goes wrong! Renaming files is essentially moving them to a new location a typo could result in them being moved somewhere you can’t find them. While it can be done with the mv command, some tools are built specifically for the task. However, renaming multiple files at once is a bit more complex. We’ve already covered moving and renaming files and directories using the mv command. This guide will show you how to rename multiple files in Linux – renaming files sequentially, changing the extension, adding the date, and other renaming tasks.
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