5

I have a directory full of files with names in this format (with numbers as the start of each filename):

102_file.txt
104_list.txt
242_another_file.txt

I would like to rename them as follows (i.e. removing the numbers):

file.txt
list.txt
another_file.txt

Can anyone suggest a way to do this (presumably from the terminal)?

Hennes
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Tomba
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1 Answers1

10

I assume you have the bash shell on your mac.

You can do it using the bash parameter expansion:

for name in *; do mv -v "$name" "${name#[0-9]*_}"; done

This will remove all digits up to the first _.

Note: this will overwrite files which end up having the same name.

Example:

$ ls -1
000_file0.txt
001_file1.txt
002_file1.txt
003_003_file3.txt

$ for name in ; do mv -v "$name" "${name#[0-9]_}"; done
000_file0.txt' ->file0.txt'
001_file1.txt' ->file1.txt'
002_file1.txt' ->file1.txt'
003_003_file3.txt' ->003_file3.txt'

both 001_file1.txt and 002_file1.txt will be renamed to file1.txt. in this case the file 001_file1.txt is overwriten by file 002_file1.txt. which file will get overwriten depends on the ordering of the * glob. typically it is alphanumerical.

if the separating character is some other character then replace this character

for name in *; do mv -v "$name" "${name#[0-9]*_}"; done
                                              ^ this character

for example space

for name in *; do mv -v "$name" "${name#[0-9]* }"; done
                                              ^ space
Lesmana
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