Renaming multiple files at once with a pattern on Ubuntu

Question

I have around 300 files named

some_name_123456789.zip
another-name2_987654321.zip
something(1)_123454321.zip
[2]something_987656789.zip

I need to rename them all to

ds_123456789.zip
ds_987654321.zip
ds_123454321.zip
ds_987656789.zip

How can i do this?

Solution 1

You can do this with the rename command line utility. To do what you want you need a simple regular expression:

rename "s/.+_/ds/g" files

.+ represents everything up to (in this context) the last underscore (_) character (so this works with multiple underscores, as mentioned in your first example). This requires that there be at least one character before the underscore; if you might have file names like _20131012.zip, use .* instead. So this three-character string (.+_ or .*_) will match everything up to and including the last underscore in the filename. s/old/new/ means substitute the new string (ds) for the old string. The g means global and might not be necessary in this case.

Solution 2

or, using the cross-platform renamer:

$ renamer --regex --find '.+_' --replace 'ds' *

Comments

[pabouk - Ukraine stay strong]

To be sure that the regexp matches from the beginning I would rather put ^ to the beginning. Also OP wanted to retain the underscore. The g option at the end is not really needed here - it would match multiple instances in the file name if possible. So I think this command would perform better: rename "s/^.+_/ds_/" files

[noggerl]

adding the g is just a standard habit from me and i agree that it's not needed in this case.

[Tim Truston]

Does this work for a list of folders too or what do you add to make it?