Renaming many files in Mac OS X, batch processing

Question

I used to rename file in Linux via a rename command:

rename 's/old_pattern/new_pattern/g' *glob

Is there something similar in Mac OS X (Snow Leopard)?

Answer 1

With Homebrew, a package manager for OS X:

brew install rename 

Then you can run the same rename commands as in Linux.

Answer 2

Use the power of ZSH wisely (type zsh in the terminal if you are one of those poor souls who don't use it by default):

autoload zmv
zmv '(*).htm' '$1.html'

ZMV follows MMV syntax.

Answer 3

Clumsy me:

for i in *.yourfiles; do mv "$i" "`echo $i | sed 's/old/new/g'`"; done 

And if you want to use it like I do often this way:

rename 's/old/new/' *.files

I recommend to use this litte script in ~/bin/rename:

#!/usr/bin/env zsh
SUBSEXPR=$1
shift
for i in $@; do mv $i `echo "$i" | sed $SUBSEXPR`; done

Answer 4

You can try to install MacPorts and install the renameutils package:

renameutils @0.10.0 (sysutils)

renameutils is a set of programs designed to make renaming files faster and less cumbersome

Answer 5

There are various version of rename. It looks like you are looking for the Perl-based one.

One version of this utility comes with the File::Rename Perl module. You can install it with something like sudo cpan -i File::Rename.

Or, you could go with the rename from Debian's perl package. It is just a single file to download. Put it where ever you like and chmod it so that it is executable.

---

An alternative is the zmv tool that comes with zsh. It does not have the same syntax, but it does come with your OS and it can easily take care of many of the common cases.

Answer 6

On Macs I use Aristotle Pagaltzis's freely available rename, which like Debian's is Perl-based. You can get it here. Or visit here to read it first - always a good idea.

You need to place that somewhere in your $PATH and make it executable (chmod +x rename) and then you're good to go.

Answer 7

This shouldn't be difficult but apparently it is. Example, I want to rename all file's extension from aiff to aifc.

find . -iname "*.aiff" -exec bash -c 'mv "$0" "${0%\.aiff}.aifc"' {} \;

Answer 8

If you are looking for a GUI, try Name Mangler. It has a "preview" feature that shows what will happen if you follow through with the renaming.

Answer 9

the equivalent command in renamer (cross-platform) is

$ renamer --regex --find 'old_pattern' --replace 'new_pattern' *glob

Answer 10

I just went ahead and found my favorite I've seen referred to as perl-rename giving the rename command where help looks like this:

Usage: rename [-v] [-n] [-f] perlexpr [filenames]

That's how I know I got the one I like.

For Mac, even in Homebrew they have others where I just vaguely remember having trouble. So it's not the rename package, and it's not the nongnu renameutils package either.

Got it from here and just did the install like they mention: https://github.com/subogero/rename

Answer 11

If you like Sublime Text's multiselect you could use it with qmv:

qmv --editor="/usr/bin/s3 -w" files