Batch Renaming Files using RegEx

And a Command Line Tool Aptly Named ‘Rename’

You can bring a Linux utility called `rename` to OS X by:

brew install rename

My favorite usage pattern is as follows:

rename 's/<expression>/<replacement>/' * -n

• Both <expression> and <replacement> support RegEx
• The * is just to target all files in the directory
• The -n flag makes it a dry run
• If the results look right, run it again without the flag

Example

Imagine we have these files:

foo-1-foo.txt
foo-2-foo.txt
foo-3-foo.txt

To replace only the leading ‘foo’, use:

rename 's/^foo/bar/' *.txt

Result:

bar-1-foo.txt
bar-2-foo.txt
bar-3-foo.txt