How to Rename Files in Linux and MacOS Terminal
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Renaming files is something that occurs frequently, and in Linux on terminal, there are many ways to rename files. Let’s look at some of the main ways you can rename your files on Linux and other Unix based systems like MacOS.
Linux Commands
If you’re brand new to Linux commands, read my full guide on Linux Commands them here.
Renaming files with the mv Command
The mv
command moves a file to another place. It can also be used to move a file to the same location, and simply change it’s name. For example, if you wanted to rename a file called file-1.txt
to file-2.txt
, you would first cd into that directory, and run the following:
mv file-1.txt file-2.txt
This technically “moves” the file, but in reality the end result is that the file is renamed and in the same location.
Renaming multiple files
If you want to rename more than one file at once, we can’t just use the mv
command. For that, we need to loop through each file we want to rename. We can use this in conjunction with the find
command to find all the files that fit our criteria easily. For example, the below will find all .txt, .csv and .html files, and turn them into .js files:
for f in $(find . -name '*.txt' -or -name '*.csv' -or -name '*.html'); do
mv $f ${f%.*}.js
done
Let’s look at how this works in a little more detail:
- We run a
for
loop,for f in $()
. This will find all files, where it matches what is inside$()
. In this example, it finds anything with the file type .txt, .csv, or .html. You can learn more about find here. - For each of the matching files, we run the
mv
command. We runmv $f ${f%.*}.js
. $f
is the current matching file we are looping through.${f%.*}.html
is saying rename any file with any extenstion ({f%.*}
could be{f%.html}
,{f%.csv}
, etc), and change its name to the file name with our new extension,.js
.
After that, you’ll have successfully moved all files.
More Tips and Tricks for Linux
- How the mkdir command works on Linux
- How the cp Command works on Linux
- How to Remove Empty and Non Empty Directories in Linux
- How the chown Command works on Linux
- Delete .DS_Store recursively from all directories and sub-directories
- How the cd command works in Linux
- How the ls command works on Linux
- Speed up your Website by Converting your Images to WebP from Terminal
- How the cat Command works on Linux
- How the find Command works on Linux