How to Batch Rename Files in a macOS Terminal?

Question

I have a folder with a series of files named:

prefix_1234_567.png
prefix_abcd_efg.png

I\'d like to batch remove one underscore and

Answer 1

You could use sed:

ls * | sed -e 'p;s@_.*_@_@g' | xargs -n2 mv

result:

prefix_567.png prefix_efg.png

*to do a dry-run first, replace mv at the end with echo

Explanation:

• e: optional for only 1 sed command.
• p: to print the input to sed, in this case it will be the original file name before any renaming
• @: is a replacement of / character to make sed more readable. That is, instead of using sed s/search/replace/g, use s@search@replace@g
• _.* : the underscore is an escape character to refer to the actual '.' character zero or more times (as opposed to ANY character in regex)
• -n2: indicates that there are 2 outputs that need to be passed on to mv as parameters. for each input from ls, this sed command will generate 2 output, which will then supplied to mv.