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Rename a File in Linux – Bash Terminal Command

Zaira Hira

Renaming files is a very common operation whether you are using the command line or the GUI.

Compared to the GUI (or Graphical User Interface), the CLI is especially powerful. This is in part because you can rename files in bulk or even schedule the scripts to rename files at a certain point in time.

In this tutorial, you will see how you can rename files in the Linux command line using the built-in mv command.

How to Use the Linux mv Command

You can use the built-in Linux command mv to rename files.

The mv command follows this syntax:

mv [options] source_file destination_file

Here are some of the options that can come in handy with the mv command:

• -v , —verbose : Explains what is being done.
• -i , —interactive : Prompts before renaming the file.

Let’s say you want to rename index.html to web_page.html . You use the mv command as follows:

zaira@Zaira:~/rename-files$ mv index.html web_page.html 

Let’s list the files and see if the file has been renamed:

zaira@Zaira:~/rename-files$ ls web_page.html

How to Name Files in Bulk Using mv

Let’s discuss a script where you can rename files in a bulk using a loop and the mv command.

Here we have a list of files with the extension .js .

zaira@Zaira:~/rename-files$ ls -lrt total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 zaira zaira 0 Sep 30 00:24 index.js -rw-r--r-- 1 zaira zaira 0 Sep 30 00:24 config.js -rw-r--r-- 1 zaira zaira 0 Sep 30 00:24 blog.js

Next, you want to convert them to .html .

You can use the command below to rename all the files in the folder:

for f in *.js; do mv -- "$f" "$.html"; done

Let’s break down this long string to see what’s happening under the hood:

• The first part [ for f in *.js ] tells the for loop to process each “.js” file in the directory.
• The next part [ do mv — «$f» «$.html ] specifies what the processing will do. It is using mv to rename each file. The new file is going to be named with the original file’s name excluding the .js part. A new extension of .html will be appended instead.
• The last part [ done ] simply ends the loop once all the files have been processed.

zaira@Zaira:~/rename-files$ ls -lrt total 0 -rw-r--r-- 1 zaira zaira 0 Sep 30 00:24 index.html -rw-r--r-- 1 zaira zaira 0 Sep 30 00:24 config.html -rw-r--r-- 1 zaira zaira 0 Sep 30 00:24 blog.html

Conclusion

As you can see, renaming files is quite easy using the CLI. It can be really powerful when deployed in a script.

What’s your favorite thing you learned here? Let me know on Twitter!

You can read my other posts here.

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How Do I Rename a File in the Ubuntu Terminal?

Renaming an existing file is a basic operation that usually does not require a specialized tool in any operating system. Renaming a single file in Linux is quite a simple task but renaming more than one or multiple files via terminal is a more challenging job for new Linux users. In all Linux distributions, the terminal is an essential command-line application for administering the Linux systems.

However, to use effectively this CLI application, you should have strong knowledge about basic Linux commands and fundamentals such as create, delete and renaming an existing file. Different commands are available in the Ubuntu Linux system to rename a file that we will explore in this article.

We will provide comprehensive details in this tutorial on how you can rename a file in Ubuntu using the command-line application Terminal. All commands have implemented for the demonstration on the Ubuntu 20.04 Linux system.

Renaming Files in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS System Using Terminal

The two different commands ‘mv’ and ‘rename’ are available in the Ubuntu Linux system to rename a file via terminal or command-line approach. Let us discuss each command in detail.

Rename File in Ubuntu Using the mv Command

Before using the ‘mv’ command, you should know how it works on your system. The basic syntax of the ‘mv’ command is given below:

The most popular ‘mv’ command options are provided below:
-f – Displays no message or alerts before overwriting a file name.
-i – Displays prompt confirmation or warning messages before renaming a file.
-u – It moves a file if the file does not exist on the specified destination or in case of a new file.

The file source can be the destination of one or more files. The destination only represents a single file.

Example

For example, to rename the file ‘testfile1.txt’ to ‘testfile2.txt, you need to run the following command:

How to Use the mv Command to Rename Multiple Files?

Usually, you can only rename a single file using the move command. To rename multiple files using the mv command, you can use the mv command to combine with different commands. Let us say, mv command can be used along with for loop, while loop, and find command.

Let us explain with the help of an example. Here, we want to rename all .txt extension files of the current directory replaced with another .html extension. In this case, the following code will help us:

The above code will iterate using for loop through the files list having the .txt extension. After that, in the second line, it will replace each file extension .txt with .html. In the end, ‘done’ indicated the end of the for loop segment.

How to Use the Rename Command to Rename Files in Ubuntu?

Using the rename command, you can rename multiple files of a current directly at once. This command contains more advance features as compared to the ‘mv’ command. For renaming files using the rename command, you should have basic knowledge about regular expressions usage.

In most Linux distributions, the ‘rename’ command is installed by default. However, if you have not installed the rename command on your Ubuntu system then, it can be easily installed on Ubuntu and its derivatives by running the following command:

Syntax of Rename Command

Using the following syntax, you can use the rename command:

The rename command will rename files according to the specific regular Perl expressions.

Example

In the following example, we want to change the extension of all text files. So, we will change or replace all files with extension .txt to .html by executing the following command:

When you use the rename command followed by option ‘-n’, it also displays the file names to be renamed and renaming them as follows:

The above command displays the following result on the terminal window:

By default, the rename command does not overwrite an existing file. However, if you pass option -f along with the rename command then, it will help you to overwrite the existing files. Execute the following command to use the rename command followed by the -f option:

To change or rename the file name using rename command use the following command:

Example

For example, we want to rename a single file with the name ‘testfile.txt’ to newtestfile.txt. In this case, the above command will be modified into the following form:

To see more usage of rename command, let us try the following examples:

For example, to rename all those files, which contain spaces in file name and you want to replace it with underscores. In this case, the rename command will help you in the following way:

Using rename command, you can convert the file name in all lowercase letters as follows:

Similarly, to convert the file name to all uppercase letters, use the following command:

To explore more options and uses of rename command, type the following terminal command:

Conclusion

We discussed in this article how to rename files in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS distribution using the terminal application. Moreover, we explored the working and uses of the ‘mv’ and ‘rename’ commands for renaming a file. From the above discussion, we concluded mv command is useful for renaming a file but, rename command offers more advanced options for file renaming in the Ubuntu system.

About the author

Samreena Aslam

Samreena Aslam holds a master’s degree in Software Engineering. Currently, she’s working as a Freelancer & Technical writer. She’s a Linux enthusiast and has written various articles on Computer programming, different Linux flavors including Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, and Mint.

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How to Rename a File in Bash

Renaming a filename is a very common task for any operating system. Anyone can easily rename a file by using the graphical user interface (GUI). You can also rename a file by using a command in bash script. Many commands exist in Linux to rename a filename. The command ‘mv’ is the most popular command for renaming a file. There is another command called ‘rename’ that can also be used for the same task. However, this command is not installed on Ubuntu by default, so you will have to install this command to rename a file. This article explains how to use these two commands in bash to rename filenames.

Rename a File with ‘mv’ Command

The most commonly used command in Linux to rename a filename is the ‘mv’ command. The syntax of this command is given below.

Using any option with the ‘mv’ command is optional. To rename a file, you must type the original filename after the renamed filename with this command. Various uses of the ‘mv’ command are explained in the next section of this article.

Example 1: Rename a File with ‘mv’ Command without Options

The name of the original file and the name of the renamed file will be taken as the input from the user in the following script. The file will be renamed if the original filename exists. If any file with the renamed filename already exists, then the old file will be overwritten by the content of the newly renamed file.

# Take the original filename
read -p «Enter the original filename to rename:» original
# Take the renamed filename
read -p «Enter the renamed filename to rename:» rename

# Check the original file exists or not
if [ -f $original ] ; then
# Rename the file
$ ( mv $original $rename )
echo «The file is renamed.»
fi

Example 2: Rename a File with ‘mv’ Command Using -i option

The problem of the above example can be solved by using the ‘-i’ option with the ‘mv’ command. The following script will ask for permission from the user to overwrite before doing the renaming task. If the user press ‘n’ then the rename task will not be done.

# Take the original filename
read -p «Enter the original filename to rename:» original
# Take the renamed filename
read -p «Enter the rename filename to rename:» rename

# Check the original file exists or not
if [ -f $original ] ; then
# Check the rename filename exists or not
if [ $ ( mv -i $original $rename ) ] ; then
echo «The file is renamed.»
fi
fi

Rename a File with ‘rename’ Command

The ‘rename’ method is used for advanced file renaming tasks. Run the following command in the terminal to install the ‘rename’ command.

The syntax of this command is given below.

This command can be used with and without options, like the ‘mv‘ command. Multiple files can be renamed at once by using a regular expression. Here, the ‘s’ indicates substitution. If the search text is found, then the files will be renamed by the replacement text.

Example 3: Rename Files that Match with Regular Expression

The following script can be used to rename multiple files by using a regular expression pattern that will take the extension of the searched filename and the renamed filename as the inputs. If the current extension matches the search text, then the extension of any file will be renamed by replacing the text.

# Take the search text
read -p «Enter the search text:» search
# Take the replace text
read -p «Enter the replace text:» replace

# Rename all files that match with the pattern
$ ( rename «s/. $search /. $replace /» * )
echo «The files are renamed.»

Conclusion

This article used a number of examples to illustrate the use of the ‘mv’ and ‘rename’ bash commands. Renaming a filename should be easier for bash users after practicing the above examples.

About the author

Fahmida Yesmin

I am a trainer of web programming courses. I like to write article or tutorial on various IT topics. I have a YouTube channel where many types of tutorials based on Ubuntu, Windows, Word, Excel, WordPress, Magento, Laravel etc. are published: Tutorials4u Help.

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