Renaming files in a folder to sequential numbers
-
13-09-2020 - |
Question
I want to rename the files in a directory to sequential numbers. Based on creation date of the files.
For Example sadf.jpg
to 0001.jpg
, wrjr3.jpg
to 0002.jpg
and so on, the number of leading zeroes depending on the total amount of files (no need for extra zeroes if not needed).
Solution
Try to use a loop, let
, and printf
for the padding:
a=1
for i in *.jpg; do
new=$(printf "%04d.jpg" "$a") #04 pad to length of 4
mv -i -- "$i" "$new"
let a=a+1
done
using the -i
flag prevents automatically overwriting existing files.
OTHER TIPS
Beauty in one line:
ls -v | cat -n | while read n f; do mv -n "$f" "$n.ext"; done
You can change .ext
with .png
, .jpg
, etc.
I like gauteh's solution for its simplicity, but it has an important drawback. When running on thousands of files, you can get "argument list too long" message (more on this), and second, the script can get really slow. In my case, running it on roughly 36.000 files, script moved approx. one item per second! I'm not really sure why this happens, but the rule I got from colleagues was "find
is your friend".
find -name '*.jpg' | # find jpegs
gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv %s %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | # build mv command
bash # run that command
To count items and build command, gawk was used. Note the main difference, though. By default find
searches for files in current directory and its subdirectories, so be sure to limit the search on current directory only, if necessary (use man find
to see how).
using Pero's solution on OSX required some modification. I used:
find . -name '*.jpg' \
| awk 'BEGIN{ a=0 }{ printf "mv \"%s\" %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' \
| bash
note: the backslashes are there for line continuation
edit July 20, 2015:
incorporated @klaustopher's feedback to quote the \"%s\"
argument of the mv
command in order to support filenames with spaces.
with "rename" command
rename -N 0001 -X 's/.*/$N/' *.jpg
or
rename -N 0001 's/.*/$N.jpg/' *.jpg
A very simple bash one liner that keeps the original extensions, adds leading zeros, and also works in OSX:
num=0; for i in *; do mv "$i" "$(printf '%04d' $num).${i#*.}"; ((num++)); done
Simplified version of http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1355021
To work in all situations, put a \" for files that have space in the name
find . -name '*.jpg' | gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv \"%s\" %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | bash
If your rename
doesn't support -N
, you can do something like this:
ls -1 -c | xargs rename -n 's/.*/our $i; sprintf("%04d.jpg", $i++)/e'
Edit To start with a given number, you can use the (somewhat ugly-looking) code below, just replace 123 with the number you want:
ls -1 -c | xargs rename -n 's/.*/our $i; if(!$i) { $i=123; } sprintf("%04d.jpg", $i++)/e'
This lists files in order by creation time (newest first, add -r
to ls to reverse sort), then sends this list of files to rename. Rename uses perl code in the regex to format and increment counter.
However, if you're dealing with JPEG images with EXIF information, I'd recommend exiftool
This is from the exiftool documentation, under "Renaming Examples"
exiftool '-FileName<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%-c.%%e dir
Rename all images in "dir" according to the "CreateDate" date and time, adding a copy number with leading '-' if the file already exists ("%-c"), and
preserving the original file extension (%e). Note the extra '%' necessary to escape the filename codes (%c and %e) in the date format string.
On OSX, install the rename script from Homebrew:
brew install rename
Then you can do it really ridiculously easily:
rename -e 's/.*/$N.jpg/' *.jpg
Or to add a nice prefix:
rename -e 's/.*/photo-$N.jpg/' *.jpg
Follow command rename all files to sequence and also lowercase extension:
rename --counter-format 000001 --lower-case --keep-extension --expr='$_ = "$N" if @EXT' *
I had a similar issue and wrote a shell script for that reason. I've decided to post it regardless that many good answers were already posted because I think it can be helpful for someone. Feel free to improve it!
@Gnutt The behavior you want can be achieved by typing the following:
./numerate.sh -d <path to directory> -o modtime -L 4 -b <startnumber> -r
If the option -r
is left out the reaming will be only simulated (Should be helpful for testing).
The otion L describes the length of the target number (which will be filled with leading zeros)
it is also possible to add a prefix/suffix with the options -p <prefix>
-s <suffix>
.
In case somebody wants the files to be sorted numerically before they get numbered, just remove the -o modtime
option.
a=1
for i in *.jpg; do
mv -- "$i" "$a.jpg"
a=`expr $a + 1`
done
Let us assume we have these files in a directory, listed in order of creation, the first being the oldest:
a.jpg
b.JPG
c.jpeg
d.tar.gz
e
then ls -1cr
outputs exactly the list above. You can then use rename
:
ls -1cr | xargs rename -n 's/^[^\.]*(\..*)?$/our $i; sprintf("%03d$1", $i++)/e'
which outputs
rename(a.jpg, 000.jpg)
rename(b.JPG, 001.JPG)
rename(c.jpeg, 002.jpeg)
rename(d.tar.gz, 003.tar.gz)
Use of uninitialized value $1 in concatenation (.) or string at (eval 4) line 1.
rename(e, 004)
The warning ”use of uninitialized value […]” is displayed for files without an extension; you can ignore it.
Remove -n
from the rename
command to actually apply the renaming.
This answer is inspired by Luke’s answer of April 2014. It ignores Gnutt’s requirement of setting the number of leading zeroes depending on the total amount of files.
Again using Pero's solution with little modifying, because find
will be traversing the directory tree in the order items are stored within the directory entries. This will (mostly) be consistent from run to run, on the same machine and will essentially be "file/directory creation order" if there have been no deletes.
However, in some case you need to get some logical order, say, by name, which is used in this example.
find -name '*.jpg' | sort -n | # find jpegs
gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv %s %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | # build mv command
bash # run that command
Sorted by time, limited to jpg, leading zeroes and a basename (in case you likely want one):
ls -t *.jpg | cat -n | \
while read n f; do mv "$f" "$(printf thumb_%04d.jpg $n)"; done
(all on one line, without the \
)
You can also use ls
ls *.JPG| awk 'BEGIN{ a=0 }{ printf "mv %s gopro_%04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | bash
The majority of the other solutions will overwrite existing files already named as a number. This is particularly a problem if running the script, adding more files, and then running the script again.
This script renames existing numerical files first:
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use File::Temp qw/tempfile/;
my $dir = $ARGV[0]
or die "Please specify directory as first argument";
opendir(my $dh, $dir) or die "can't opendir $dir: $!";
# First rename any files that are already numeric
while (my @files = grep { /^[0-9]+(\..*)?$/ } readdir($dh))
{
for my $old (@files) {
my $ext = $old =~ /(\.[^.]+)$/ ? $1 : '';
my ($fh, $new) = tempfile(DIR => $dir, SUFFIX => $ext);
close $fh;
rename "$dir/$old", $new;
}
}
rewinddir $dh;
my $i;
while (my $file = readdir($dh))
{
next if $file =~ /\A\.\.?\z/;
my $ext = $file =~ /(\.[^.]+)$/ ? $1 : '';
rename "$dir/$file", sprintf("%s/%04d%s", $dir, ++$i, $ext);
}
ls -1tr | rename -vn 's/.*/our $i;if(!$i){$i=1;} sprintf("%04d.jpg", $i++)/e'
rename -vn - remove n for off test mode
{$i=1;} - control start number
"%04d.jpg" - control count zero 04 and set output extension .jpg
To me this combination of answers worked perfectly:
ls -v | gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv %s %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | bash
ls -v
helps with ordering 1 10 9 in correct: 1 9 10 order, avoiding filename extension problems with jpg JPG jpeggawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv %s %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }'
renumbers with 4 characters and leading zeros. By avoiding mv I do not accidentally try to overwrite anything that is there already by accidentally having the same number.bash
executes
Be aware of what @xhienne said, piping unknown content to bash is a security risk. But this was not the case for me as I was using my scanned photos.
Here is what worked for me.
I Have used rename command so that if any file contains spaces in name of it then , mv command dont get confused between spaces and actual file.
Here i replaced spaces , ' ' in a file name with '_' for all jpg files
#! /bin/bash rename 'y/ /_/' *jpg #replacing spaces with _ let x=0; for i in *.jpg;do let x=(x+1) mv $i $x.jpg done
Nowadays there is an option after you select multiple files for renaming (I have seen in thunar file manager).
- select multiple files
- check options
- select rename
A prompt comes with all files in that particular dir just check with the category section
This script will sort the files by creation date on Mac OS bash. I use it to mass rename videos. Just change the extension and the first part of the name.
ls -trU *.mp4| awk 'BEGIN{ a=0 }{ printf "mv %s lecture_%03d.mp4\n", $0, a++ }' | bash
Here a another solution with "rename" command:
find -name 'access.log.*.gz' | sort -Vr | rename 's/(\d+)/$1+1/ge'
This oneliner lists all files in the current directory, sorts by creation timestamp in reverse order (means the oldest file is at the beginning) and renames automatically with trailing zeros as required by the amount of files. The file extension will be preserved.
I usually have only one folder since years for mobile phone pictures and movies. Applying this command, my pictures and movies are ready then for a slideshow in the correct order on the tv or archiving as well.
Be aware that if you have file name collisions, you are losing files. So first rename to something odd like temp001.jpg
and then execute to your final file name.
DIGITS=$(ls | wc -l | xargs | wc -c | xargs); ls -tcr | cat -n | while read n f; do mv "$f" "$(printf "%0${DIGITS}d" $n).${f##*.}"; done
Pero's answer got me here :)
I wanted to rename files relative to time as the image viewers did not display images in time order.
ls -tr *.jpg | # list jpegs relative to time
gawk 'BEGIN{ a=1 }{ printf "mv %s %04d.jpg\n", $0, a++ }' | # build mv command
bash # run that command
If you are using image Annotator for labelling the images .
$ make qt5py3
$ python3 labelImg.py
To renumber 6000, files in one folder you could use the 'Rename' option of the ACDsee program.
For defining a prefix use this format: ####"*"
Then set the start number and press Rename and the program will rename all 6000 files with sequential numbers.