how can i rename multiple files depending on a string occuring in the filenames?



i have many files that have "inputstring" somewhere in their filename (without the quotes), and i want to rename them all so that "inputstring" is replaced with "newstring". and i also want to specify arbitrary text for "inputstring" and "newstring" so that i can call the scripts that does this like this:

batchrename apple peer

this should rename all files in present directory that have "apple" somewhere in their filename, and change "apple" into "peer".


i have found some batch rename scripts, but they all depend on fixed values of the string that should be replaced, and that means i have to rewrite a new script each time i want to do this with different strings.

thanks for your help.

code:

#!/bin/sh
ls -1 *$1* | awk -v old="$1" -v new="$2" 'begin{q="\047"}
{           oldfile=$0
            sub(old,new)            
            cmd = sprintf("mv %s%s%s %s%s%s",q,oldfile,q,q,$0,q)

with zsh:


code:
$ autoload -u zmv
$ touch 123inputstringabc abcinputstring123
$ ls -l *string*
-rw-r--r-- 1 administrator none 0 may 21 16:53 123inputstringabc
-rw-r--r-- 1 administrator none 0 may 21 16:53 abcinputstring123
$ zmv '(*)inputstring(*)' '${1}newstring${2}'
$ ls -l *string*
-rw-r--r-- 1 administrator none 0 may 21 16:53 123newstringabc

it works! thanks.

quote:
originally posted by karman
i have many files that have "inputstring" somewhere in their filename (without the quotes), and i want to rename them all so that "inputstring" is replaced with "newstring". and i also want to specify arbitrary text for "inputstring" and "newstring" so that i can call the scripts that does this like this:

batchrename apple peer

this should rename all files in present directory that have "apple" somewhere in their filename, and change "apple" into "peer".

i have found some batch rename scripts, but they all depend on fixed values of the string that should be replaced, and that means i have to rewrite a new script each time i want to do this with different strings.



(untested)


code:

## name: batchrename
## usage: batchrename string1 string2
## description:
##    rename all files with string1 in their name
##    by replacing string1 with string2

string1=$1
string2=$2
for file in *"$string1"*
do
  mv "$file" "${file%%"$string1"*}$string2${file#*"$string1"}"
done

there is a built-in linux utility "rename" that does the trick



i discovered that my linux comes with the "rename" utility.
usage: "rename inputstring newstring"

quote:
originally posted by karman
i discovered that my linux comes with the "rename" utility.
usage: "rename inputstring newstring"

but good to know how to write a script yourself.


there are at least two different versions of rename on linux systems, and their syntax is not the same. if you write a script that uses rename, it may not work on another linux system, and almost certainly will not work on any other *nix system.