How to rename multiple files at once?

Question

I want to rename multiple files at once. For example:

Picture1.jpg
Picture2.jpg
Picture3.jpg
Picture4.jpg

into

Vacation-Picture1.jpg
Vacation-Picture2.jpg
Vacation-Picture3.jpg
Vacation-Picture4.jpg

I am quite familiar with the terminal, if there is no app which is quite good in renaming files.

Answer 1

Try something like this:

 for file in Picture*.jpg
 do
    mv "$file" "vacation-$file"
 done  

(open terminal and add one line {press Enter} at a time.)

What that does is uses the variable file for each entry matching Picture*.jpg. Then it takes the file or folder and moves it to be prefixed with "vacation".

Hope that helps

Answer 2

brew install rename

rename s/config\./route\.config\./g *

First you need homebrew installed. Then install rename, and the above regex renames all files with "config." to "route.config".

So say files config.a.js, and config.b.js -> route.config.a.js, route.config.b.js.

Answer 3

No need for command line...

1. Add all the images to be renamed into a folder.
2. Select all files, right click mouse and select "Rename x items"
3. Select "Add text" from first drop down menu
4. Select "Before name" from the second drop down menu
5. Enter "Vacation_" into the text box (without the quotation marks)
6. Press Enter.

Answer 4

While not a Terminal solution, I like Forklift for this purpose (and for many others). From their website:

Answer 5

I like user933531's answer, but if you'd like a GUI, the A Better Finder Rename app is really good. I got it from the App Store.

Answer 6

If you prefer a more flexible solution and are able to work with regular expressions this little perl script is very helpful:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# rename - Larry's filename fixer
# Usage: rename perlexpr [files]

($op = shift) || die "Usage: rename perlexpr [filenames]\n";

chomp(@ARGV = <STDIN>) unless @ARGV;

for (@ARGV) {
    $was = $_;
    eval $op;
    die $@ if $@;
    rename($was,$_) unless $was eq $_;
}

Answer 7

If you want to bulk rename files I built a small script for that.

# Rename Bullk files.
# Renames all the files in PWD with the given extension.
#
# @param extension | jpg
# @param new_name | name
# Usage: rename jpg new_name
function rename() {
    echo "———————————————— STARTED ————————————————"

    # Counter.
    COUNTER=1

    # For do loop.
    for file in *."$1"; do
        mv "$file" "$2-$COUNTER.$1"
        COUNTER=$[$COUNTER +1]
    done
    echo "———————————————— ✔✔✔ RENAMED Every $1 file in the PWD! ✔✔✔︎ ————————————————"
}

Just put it in your .bashrc or .zshrc and run Usage: rename jpg new_name this will rename all jpg files in the PWD to new_name-1.jpg, new_name-2.jpg, etc.

Cheers!