How to rename with prefix/suffix?

Question

How do I do mv original.filename new.original.filename without retyping the original filename?

I would imagine being able to do something like mv -p=new. original.filename or perhaps mv original.filename new.~ or whatever - but I can't see anything like this after looking at man mv / info mv pages.

Of course, I could write a shell script to do this, but isn't there an existing command/flag for it?

Answer 1

In Bash and zsh you can do this with Brace Expansion. This simply expands a list of items in braces. For example:

# echo {vanilla,chocolate,strawberry}-ice-cream
vanilla-ice-cream chocolate-ice-cream strawberry-ice-cream

So you can do your rename as follows:

mv {,new.}original.filename

as this expands to:

mv original.filename new.original.filename

Answer 2

You could use the rename(1) command:

rename 's/(.*)$/new.$1/' original.filename

Edit: If rename isn't available and you have to rename more than one file, shell scripting can really be short and simple for this. For example, to rename all .jpg to prefix_.jpg in the current directory:

for filename in *.jpg; do mv "$filename" "prefix_$filename"; done;

Answer 3

You can achieve a unix compatible multiple file rename (using wildcards) by creating a for loop:

for file in *; do
  mv $file new.${file%%}
done

Answer 4

I've seen people mention a rename command, but it is not routinely available on Unix systems (as opposed to Linux systems, say, or Cygwin - on both of which, rename is an executable rather than a script). That version of rename has a fairly limited functionality:

rename from to file ...

It replaces the from part of the file names with the to, and the example given in the man page is:

rename foo foo0 foo? foo??

This renames foo1 to foo01, and foo10 to foo010, etc.

I use a Perl script called rename, which I originally dug out from the first edition Camel book, circa 1992, and then extended, to rename files.

#!/bin/perl -w
#
# @(#)$Id: rename.pl,v 1.7 2008/02/16 07:53:08 jleffler Exp $
#
# Rename files using a Perl substitute or transliterate command

use strict;
use Getopt::Std;

my(%opts);
my($usage) = "Usage: $0 [-fnxV] perlexpr [filenames]\n";
my($force) = 0;
my($noexc) = 0;
my($trace) = 0;

die $usage unless getopts('fnxV', \%opts);

if ($opts{V})
{
    printf "%s\n", q'RENAME Version $Revision: 1.7 $ ($Date: 2008/02/16 07:53:08 $)';
    exit 0;
}
$force = 1 if ($opts{f});
$noexc = 1 if ($opts{n});
$trace = 1 if ($opts{x});

my($op) = shift;
die $usage unless defined $op;

if (!@ARGV) {
    @ARGV = <STDIN>;
    chop(@ARGV);
}

for (@ARGV)
{
    if (-e $_ || -l $_)
    {
        my($was) = $_;
        eval $op;
        die $@ if $@;
        next if ($was eq $_);
        if ($force == 0 && -f $_)
        {
            print STDERR "rename failed: $was - $_ exists\n";
        }
        else
        {
            print "+ $was --> $_\n" if $trace;
            print STDERR "rename failed: $was - $!\n"
                unless ($noexc || rename($was, $_));
        }
    }
    else
    {
        print STDERR "$_ - $!\n";
    }
}

This allows you to write any Perl substitute or transliterate command to map file names. In the specific example requested, you'd use:

rename 's/^/new./' original.filename

Answer 5

The easiest way to bulk rename files in directory is:

ls | xargs -I fileName mv fileName fileName.suffix

Answer 6

If it's open to a modification, you could use a suffix instead of a prefix. Then you could use tab-completion to get the original filename and add the suffix.

Otherwise, no this isn't something that is supported by the mv command. A simple shell script could cope though.

Answer 7

In my case I have a group of files which needs to be renamed before I can work with them. Each file has its own role in group and has its own pattern.

As result I have a list of rename commands like this:

f=`ls *canctn[0-9]*`   ;  mv $f  CNLC.$f
f=`ls *acustb[0-9]*`   ;  mv $f  CATB.$f
f=`ls *accusgtb[0-9]*` ;  mv $f  CATB.$f
f=`ls *acus[0-9]*`     ;  mv $f  CAUS.$f

Try this also :

f=MyFileName; mv $f {pref1,pref2}$f{suf1,suf2}

This will produce all combinations with prefixes and suffixes:

pref1.MyFileName.suf1
...
pref2.MyFileName.suf2

Another way to solve same problem is to create mapping array and add corespondent prefix for each file type as shown below:

#!/bin/bash
unset masks
typeset -A masks
masks[ip[0-9]]=ip
masks[iaf_usg[0-9]]=ip_usg
masks[ipusg[0-9]]=ip_usg
...
for fileMask in ${!masks[*]}; 
do  
registryEntry="${masks[$fileMask]}";
fileName=*${fileMask}*
[ -e ${fileName} ] &&  mv ${fileName} ${registryEntry}.${fileName}  
done

Answer 8

Bulk rename files bash script

#!/bin/bash
# USAGE: cd FILESDIRECTORY; RENAMERFILEPATH/MultipleFileRenamer.sh FILENAMEPREFIX INITNUMBER
# USAGE EXAMPLE: cd PHOTOS; /home/Desktop/MultipleFileRenamer.sh 2016_
# VERSION: 2016.03.05.
# COPYRIGHT: Harkály Gergő | mangoRDI (https://wwww.mangordi.com/) 

# check isset INITNUMBER argument, if not, set 1 | INITNUMBER is the first number after renaming
if [ -z "$2" ]
    then i=1;
else
    i=$2;
fi

# counts the files to set leading zeros before number | max 1000 files
count=$(ls -l * | wc -l)
if [ $count -lt 10 ]
    then zeros=1;
else
    if [ $count -lt 100 ]
        then zeros=2;
    else
        zeros=3
    fi
fi

# rename script
for file in *
do
    mv $file $1_$(printf %0"$zeros"d.%s ${i%.*} ${file##*.})
    let i="$i+1"
done