How do I rename files in sub directories?

Question

Is there any way of batch renaming files in sub directories?

For example:

Rename *.html to *.htm in a folder which has directories and sub directories.

Answer 1

Windows command prompt: (If inside a batch file, change %x to %%x)

for /r %x in (*.html) do ren "%x" *.htm

This also works for renaming the middle of the files

for /r %x in (website*.html) do ren "%x" site*.htm

Answer 2

For windows, this is the best tool I've found:

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/

It can do anything AND has the kitchen sink with it.

For Linux, you have a plethora of scripting languages and shells to help you, like the previous answers.

Answer 3

find . -regex ".*html$" | while read line;
 do 
    A=`basename ${line} | sed 's/html$/htm/g'`;
    B=`dirname ${line}`;
    mv ${line} "${B}/${A}";
 done

Answer 4

In python

import os

target_dir = "."

for path, dirs, files in os.walk(target_dir):
    for file in files:
        filename, ext = os.path.splitext(file)
        new_file = filename + ".htm"

        if ext == '.html':
            old_filepath = os.path.join(path, file)
            new_filepath = os.path.join(path, new_file)
            os.rename(old_filepath, new_filepath)

Answer 5

In Bash, you could do the following:

for x in $(find . -name \*.html); do
  mv $x $(echo "$x" | sed 's/\.html$/.htm/')
done

Answer 6

I'm sure there's a more elegant way, but here's the first thing that popped in my head:

for f in $(find . -type f -name '*.html'); do 
    mv $f $(echo "$f" | sed 's/html$/htm/')
done

Answer 7

If you have forfiles (it comes with Windows XP and 2003 and newer stuff I think) you can run:

forfiles /S /M *.HTM /C "cmd /c ren @file *.HTML"

Answer 8

On Linux, you may use the 'rename' command to rename files in batch.

Answer 9

In bash use command rename :)

 rename 's/\.htm$/.html/' *.htm

 # or

 find . -name '*.txt' -print0 | xargs -0 rename 's/.txt$/.xml/'

 #Obs1: Above I use regex \. --> literal '.'  and  $ --> end of line
 #Obs2: Use find -maxdepht 'value' for determine how recursive is
 #Obs3: Use -print0 to avoid 'names spaces asdfa' crash!

Answer 10

Total Commander which is a file manager app, lets you list & select all files within its dir & sub-dirs, then you can run any of the total commander operations on them. one of them being: multi-rename the selected files.

Answer 11

AWK on Linux. For the first directory this is your answer... Extrapolate by recursively calling awk on dir_path perhaps by writing another awk which writes this exact awk below... and so on.

ls dir_path/. | awk -F"." '{print "mv file_name/"$0" dir_path/"$1".new_extension"}' |csh

Answer 12

For Windows, I've made a convenient litte VBScript solution with regex-based renaming and Drag&Drop support. Give it a try if you like - put it in a vbs file and drop your folder on it in Explorer.

Answer 13

On Windows, The Rename does a pretty good job at that. Freeware, but not open source.

Answer 14

On Windows, you can find out opensource simple C# bulk file renamer application in https://filerenamer.codeplex.com works with a simple excel file. Give an excel file with two columns source and destination to this application and it's done.

Answer 15

On Unix, you can use rnm:

rnm -rs '/\.html$/.htm/' -fo -dp -1 *

Or

rnm -ns '/n/.htm' -ss '\.html$' -fo -dp -1 *

Explanation:

1. -ns : name string (new name). /n/ is a name string rule that expands to the filename without the extension.
2. -ss : search string (regex). Searches for files with match.
3. -rs : replace string of the form /search_regex/replace_part/modifier
4. -fo : file only mode
5. -dp : depth of directory (-1 means unlimited).