How to do a mass rename?

Question

I need to rename files names like this

transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=XXXXX

to just this

XXXXX.t         


        

Answer 1

If you are using zsh you can also do this:

autoload zmv
zmv 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=(*)' '$1.txt'

Answer 2

find -name '*v_id=*' | perl -lne'rename($_, qq($1.txt)) if /v_id=(\S+)/'

Answer 3

vimv lets you rename multiple files using Vim's text editing capabilities.

Entering vimv opens a Vim window which lists down all files and you can do pattern matching, visual select, etc to edit the names. After you exit Vim, the files will be renamed.

[Disclaimer: I'm the author of the tool]

Answer 4

You write a fairly simple shell script in which the trickiest part is munging the name.

The outline of the script is easy (bash syntax here):

for i in 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='*
do
    mv $i <modified name>
done

Modifying the name has many options. I think the easiest is probably an awk one-liner like

`echo $i  |  awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`

so...

for i in 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id='*
do
    mv $i `echo $i |  awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`.txt 
done

update

Okay, as pointed out below, this won't necessarily work for a large enough list of files; the * will overrun the command line length limit. So, then you use:

$ find . -name 'transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=*' -prune -print |
while read
do
    mv $reply `echo $reply |  awk -F'=' '{print $4}'`.txt 
done

Answer 5

I'd use ren-regexp, which is a Perl script that lets you mass-rename files very easily.

21:25:11 $ ls
transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=12345

21:25:12 $ ren-regexp 's/transform.php.*v_id=(\d+)/$1.txt/' transform.php*

  transform.php?dappName=Test&transformer=YAML&v_id=12345
1 12345.txt


21:26:33 $ ls
12345.txt