rename(1) — Linux manual page

RENAME(1)                     User Commands                    RENAME(1)

NAME

       rename - rename files

SYNOPSIS

       rename [options] expression replacement file...

DESCRIPTION

       rename will rename the specified files by replacing the first
       occurrence of expression in their name by replacement.

OPTIONS

       -s, --symlink
           Do not rename a symlink but change where it points.

       -v, --verbose
           Show which files were renamed, if any.

       -n, --no-act
           Do not make any changes; add --verbose to see what would be
           made.

       -a, --all
           Replace all occurrences of expression rather than only the
           first one.

       -l, --last
           Replace the last occurrence of expression rather than the
           first one.

       -o, --no-overwrite
           Do not overwrite existing files. When --symlink is active, do
           not overwrite symlinks pointing to existing targets.

       -i, --interactive
           Ask before overwriting existing files.

       -h, --help
           Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
           Print version and exit.

WARNING

       The renaming has no safeguards by default or without any one of
       the options --no-overwrite, --interactive or --no-act. If the
       user has permission to rewrite file names, the command will
       perform the action without any questions. For example, the result
       can be quite drastic when the command is run as root in the /lib
       directory. Always make a backup before running the command,
       unless you truly know what you are doing.

EDGE CASES

       If the expression is empty, then by default replacement will be
       added to the start of the filename. With --all, replacement will
       be inserted in between every two characters of the filename, as
       well as at the start and end.

       Normally, only the final path component of a filename is updated.
       (Or with --symlink, only the final path component of the link.)
       But if either expression or replacement contains a /, the full
       path is updated. This can cause a file to be moved between
       folders. Creating folders, and moving files between filesystems,
       is not supported.

INTERACTIVE MODE

       As most standard utilities rename can be used with a terminal
       device (tty in short) in canonical mode, where the line is
       buffered by the tty and you press ENTER to validate the user
       input. If you put your tty in cbreak mode however, rename
       requires only a single key press to answer the prompt. To set
       cbreak mode, run for example:

           sh -c 'stty -icanon min 1; "$0" "$@"; stty icanon' rename -i from to files

EXIT STATUS

       0
           all requested rename operations were successful

       1
           all rename operations failed

       2
           some rename operations failed

       4
           nothing was renamed

       64
           unanticipated error occurred

EXAMPLES

       Given the files foo1, ..., foo9, foo10, ..., foo278, the commands

           rename foo foo00 foo?
           rename foo foo0 foo??

       will turn them into foo001, ..., foo009, foo010, ..., foo278. And

           rename .htm .html *.htm

       will fix the extension of your html files. Provide an empty
       string for shortening:

           rename '_with_long_name' '' file_with_long_name.*

       will remove the substring in the filenames.

SEE ALSO

       mv(1)

REPORTING BUGS

       For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
       https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues.

AVAILABILITY

       The rename command is part of the util-linux package which can be
       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>. This page
       is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
       utilities) project. Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩. If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org. This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2024-06-14. (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2024-06-10.) If you discover
       any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you
       believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page,
       or you have corrections or improvements to the information in
       this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original manual page),
       send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

util-linux 2.41.devel-537-e... 2024-04-04                      RENAME(1)

Pages that refer to this page: rename(2), strverscmp(3)

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