How to use the command 'rename' (with examples)

The ‘rename’ command is used to rename a file or group of files with a regular expression. This can be useful when you need to rename multiple files at once, especially if they follow a common naming pattern.

Use case 1: Replace ‘from’ with ’to’ in the filenames of the specified files

Code:

rename 's/from/to/' *.txt

Motivation: The motivation for using this example is to demonstrate how to use the ‘rename’ command to replace a specific string ‘from’ with another string ’to’ in the filenames of all text files in the current directory.

Explanation:

• ‘rename’ is the command that we are using.
• ’s/from/to/’ is the regular expression. Here, ‘from’ represents the string that we want to replace, and ’to’ represents the new string we want to use.
• ‘*.txt’ is the wildcard pattern that specifies which files should be renamed. In this case, all files with the ‘.txt’ extension will be selected.

Example output: Suppose we have three files in the current directory: ‘file1.txt’, ‘file2.txt’, and ‘file3.txt’. Running the command ‘rename ’s/file/test/’ *.txt’ would rename these files to ’test1.txt’, ’test2.txt’, and ’test3.txt’, respectively.

Conclusion:

The ‘rename’ command can be a powerful tool for batch file renaming. It allows you to specify a regular expression to match and replace specific patterns in filenames. This can save you a lot of time and effort when dealing with large sets of files with similar naming conventions.