What is the command to modify file name in Linux?

There are two commands for modifying file names in Linux: 1. mv command, which can not only rename files, but also move files or folders. Modify the syntax "mv [parameter] old file name, new file name"; 2. The rename command can be used to change file names in batches by string replacement. The syntax is "rename [parameter] old file name, new file name".

#The operating environment of this tutorial: CentOS 6 system, Dell G3 computer.

To rename files or directories under Linux, you can use the mv command or the rename command. Here we share how to use both.

1. Use the mv command

The mv command can both rename and move files or folders.

mv [参数] 旧文件/目录 新文件名/目录

Example: Rename directory A to B

mv A B

Example: Move the /a directory to /b and rename it to c

mv /a /b/c

In fact, in text mode To rename a file or directory, just use the mv command. For example, if you want to rename a file named abc to 1234:

mv abc 1234

Note, if there is also a file of 1234 in the current directory, This file will overwrite it.

How to use the mv command to rename multiple files?

The mv command can only rename one file at a time, but it can be used with other commands such as find in a bash for or while loop to rename multiple files.

Example: How to rename all .html files in the current directory, changing the .html extension to .php by using a bash for loop.

for f in *.html; do 
    mv -- "$f" "${f%.html}.php"
done

Let’s analyze the code line by line:

● The first line creates a for loop and traverses a list of all files.html.

● The second line applies to each item in the list and moves the file to a new one replacing .html with .php. The section ${file%.html} uses the shell parameter extension .html to remove the part from the file name.

●　done indicates the end of the loop segment.

We can also use the command find in combination with mv to achieve the same function as above.

find . -depth -name "*.html" -exec sh -c 'f="{}"; mv -- "$f" "${f%.html}.php"' \;

The find command uses this switch to pass all .html files ending in the current directory mv to the command -exec one by one. The string {} is the name of the file currently being processed.

As you can see from the above example, using the mv command to rename multiple files is not an easy task as it requires a good understanding of Bash scripting.

2. Use the rename command

The rename command uses string replacement to batch change file names.

• Rename a single file

# 将main1.c重命名为main.c
rename main1.c main.c main1.c

• rename supports wildcards

?  可替代单个字符
*  可替代多个字符
[charset]  可替代charset集中的任意单个字符

There are these files foo1, …, foo9, foo10, …, foo278

If you use rename foo foo0 foo?, the files from foo1 to foo9 will be renamed to foo01 to foo09, the renamed file is just a file with a 4-character length name, and foo in the file name is replaced with foo0.

If you use rename foo foo0 foo??, all files from foo01 to foo99 are renamed to foo001 to foo099, and only files with names of 5 characters in length are renamed. foo is replaced with foo0.

If you use rename foo foo0 foo*, all files from foo001 to foo278 are renamed to foo0001 to foo0278, and all files starting with foo are renamed.

If you use rename foo0 foo foo0[2]*, all files from foo0200 to foo0278 are renamed to foo200 to foo278, and foo0 in the file name is replaced with foo.

• rename supports regular expressions

# 把文件名中的AA替换成aa
rename "s/AA/aa/" * 

# 把.html 后缀的改成 .php后缀
rename "s//.html//.php/" * 

# 把所有的文件名都以txt结尾
rename "s/$//.txt/" *

# 把所有以.txt结尾的文件名的.txt删掉
rename "s//.txt//" *

By default, the rename command will not overwrite existing files; but passing the -f parameter will Allows overwriting of existing files.

rename -f 's/.html/.php/' *.html

Common examples of using the rename command

Replace spaces in file names with underscores

rename 'y/ /_/' *

Convert file names Convert the file name to uppercase for lowercase

rename 'y/A-Z/a-z/' *

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