Sometimes you may need to change the names of multiple files & folders in Linux. Although Linux provides mv command to rename files, it does not support renaming multiple files & folders at once. In this article, we will look at the various tools available to rename multiple files in Linux.
How to Rename Multiple Files in Linux
Here are the different tools to rename multiple files in Linux.
Rename utility
Rename is a useful tool that allows you to easily rename multiple files. Here is the command to install it.
$ sudo apt install rename
Let us say you have the following files
ls file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
You can rename files using pattern matching as shown below. We will rename file with test in all our file names above.
$ sudo rename 's/file/test/' * $ ls test1.txt test2.txt test3.txt
Rename provides many useful options such as capitalization, force overwrite that you can figure out using man rename command.
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Rename multiple files using mmv
mmv is another useful tool that allows you to easily rename multiple files & folders at one go. Here is the command to install it.
$ sudo apt-get install mmv
Let us say you have the following files
$ ls file1.txt file2.txt file3.txt
Let us say you want to rename them test1.txt, test2.txt and test3.txt respectively. Here is the command to do it.
$ mmv file\* test\#1
In the above command, we specify to rename file with test in files & folders present in our current directory. We use * wildcard character in from pattern to indicate all files starting with filename file. We also use #1 in to pattern to match the first wildcard pattern in from part. So in this case #1 matches * and effectively means test\*
mmv comes with numerous options. For more details, you can run man mmv command.
In this article, we have seen couple of ways to rename multiple files in Linux.
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