Commands using rename

Use it as bash-script.

The first positional parameter specifies the fixed length of the numerical index.

Further params specify the files to manipulate.

Uses 'rename' to pad zeros in front of first existing number in each filename. The "--" is not required, but it will prevent errors on filenames which start with "-". You can change the "2d" to any number you want, equaling the total numeric output: aka, 4d = ????, 8d = ????????, etc.

I setup a handful of handy functions to this effect (because I couldn't figure out how to insert a var for the value) in the form of 'padnum?', such as:

padnum5 () {

/usr/bin/rename 's/\d+/sprintf("%05d",$&)/e' -- $@

}

Which would change a file "foo-1.txt" to "foo-00001.txt"

Implementation of `rename` for systems on which I don't have access to it.

Using a for loop, rename all files with .MP3 extension to .mp3.

rename is often an alias to prename, bundled with perl.

and that was the only thing that worked for me.

delete file name space

the rename is rename perl version

Not as elegant as the zmv version.

This command can be used to rename all the files with extension .xls( in this case) to .ods files. It can be used for other files with certain extension.

rename command in my system -Fuduntu running 2.6.38 Linux Kernel- is an ELF 64-bit LSB executable, not a Perl script. man page for rename command shows syntax as "rename from to where" (or something like that), so I am doing just what I have been told...

This uses Perl's rename utility (you may have to call it as prename on your box) and won't choke on spaces or other characters in filenames. It will also zero pad a number even in filenames like "vacation-4.jpg".

Would this command line achieve the desired function? My CLI knowledge is not great so this could certainly be wrong. It is merely a suggestion for more experienced uses to critique. Best wishes roly :-)

easier way to recursively change files to lowercase using rename instead

of course, replace the "-" after / by the character you wish. a dot must by protected by a backslash, as it is a regexp. it's the same result as the command proposed. but if there is more than a dash in the name, only the part before the first dash is kept... so that's not an "extension renaming" command.

the "i" controls case sensitiveness. It's slightly inefficient since it uselessly renames .jpg to .jpg, but that's more than compensated by launching only one process instead of two, besides being shorter to write.