| .\" Written by Andries E. Brouwer (aeb@cwi.nl) |
| .\" Placed in the public domain |
| .\" |
| .TH RENAME 1 "June 2011" "util-linux" "User Commands" |
| .SH NAME |
| rename \- rename files |
| .SH SYNOPSIS |
| .B rename |
| [options] |
| .IR "expression replacement file" ... |
| .SH DESCRIPTION |
| .B rename |
| will rename the specified files by replacing the first occurrence of |
| .I expression |
| in their name by |
| .IR replacement . |
| .SH OPTIONS |
| .TP |
| .BR \-s , " \-\-symlink" |
| Do not rename a symlink but its target. |
| .TP |
| .BR \-v , " \-\-verbose" |
| Show which files were renamed, if any. |
| .TP |
| .BR \-n , " \-\-no\-act" |
| Do not make any changes; add |
| .B \-\-verbose |
| to see what would be made. |
| .TP |
| .BR \-o , " \-\-no\-overwrite" |
| Do not overwrite existing files. When |
| .B \-\-symlink |
| is active, do not overwrite symlinks pointing to existing targets. |
| .TP |
| .BR \-i , " \-\-interactive" |
| Ask before overwriting existing files. |
| .TP |
| .BR \-V , " \-\-version" |
| Display version information and exit. |
| .TP |
| .BR \-h , " \-\-help" |
| Display help text and exit. |
| .SH EXAMPLES |
| Given the files |
| .IR foo1 ", ..., " foo9 ", " foo10 ", ..., " foo278 , |
| the commands |
| .RS |
| .PP |
| .nf |
| rename foo foo00 foo? |
| rename foo foo0 foo?? |
| .fi |
| .PP |
| .RE |
| will turn them into |
| .IR foo001 ", ..., " foo009 ", " foo010 ", ..., " foo278 . |
| And |
| .RS |
| .PP |
| .nf |
| rename .htm .html *.htm |
| .fi |
| .PP |
| .RE |
| will fix the extension of your html files. |
| Provide an empty string for shortening: |
| .RS |
| .PP |
| .nf |
| rename '_with_long_name' '' file_with_long_name.* |
| .fi |
| .PP |
| .RE |
| will remove the substring in the filenames. |
| .SH WARNING |
| The renaming has no safeguards by default or without any one of the options |
| .B \-\-no-overwrite\fR, |
| .B \-\-interactive |
| or |
| .B \-\-no\-act\fR. |
| If the user has |
| permission to rewrite file names, the command will perform the action without |
| any questions. For example, the result can be quite drastic when the command |
| is run as root in the /lib directory. Always make a backup before running the |
| command, unless you truly know what you are doing. |
| .SH INTERACTIVE MODE |
| As most standard utilities rename can be used with a terminal device (tty in |
| short) in canonical mode, where the line is buffered by the tty and you press |
| ENTER to validate the user input. If you put your tty in cbreak mode however, |
| rename requires only a single key press to answer the prompt. To set cbreak |
| mode, run for example: |
| .RS |
| .PP |
| .nf |
| sh \-c 'stty \-icanon min 1; "$0" "$@"; stty icanon' rename \-i from to files |
| .fi |
| .PP |
| .RE |
| .SH "EXIT STATUS" |
| .RS |
| .PD 0 |
| .TP |
| .B 0 |
| all requested rename operations were successful |
| .TP |
| .B 1 |
| all rename operations failed |
| .TP |
| .B 2 |
| some rename operations failed |
| .TP |
| .B 4 |
| nothing was renamed |
| .TP |
| .B 64 |
| unanticipated error occurred |
| .PD |
| .RE |
| .SH "SEE ALSO" |
| .BR mv (1) |
| .SH AVAILABILITY |
| The rename command is part of the util-linux package and is available from |
| https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/. |
