RENAME(1)                       User Commands                      RENAME(1)

NAME         top

       rename - rename files

SYNOPSIS         top

       rename [options] expression replacement file...

DESCRIPTION         top

       rename will rename the specified files by replacing the first
       occurrence of expression in their name by replacement.

OPTIONS         top

       -s, --symlink
              Do not rename a symlink but its target.

       -v, --verbose
              Show which files were renamed, if any.

       -n, --no-act
              Do not make any changes.

       -o, --no-overwrite
              Do not overwrite existing files.

       -V, --version
              Display version information and exit.

       -h, --help
              Display help text and exit.

EXAMPLES         top

       Given the files foo1, ..., foo9, foo10, ..., foo278, the commands

              rename foo foo00 foo?
              rename foo foo0 foo??

       will turn them into foo001, ..., foo009, foo010, ..., foo278.  And

              rename .htm .html *.htm

       will fix the extension of your html files.  Provide an empty string
       for shortening:

              rename '_with_long_name' '' file_with_long_name.*

       will remove the substring in the filenames.

WARNING         top

       The renaming has no safeguards except the --no-act option.  If the
       user has permission to rewrite file names, the command will perform
       the action without any questions.  For example, the result can be
       quite drastic when the command is run as root in the /lib directory.
       Always make a backup before running the command, unless you truly
       know what you are doing.

EXIT STATUS         top

              0      all requested rename operations were successful
              1      all rename operations failed
              2      some rename operations failed
              4      nothing was renamed
              64     unanticipated error occurred

SEE ALSO         top

       mv(1)

AVAILABILITY         top

       The rename command is part of the util-linux package and is available
       from https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the util-linux (a random collection of Linux
       utilities) project.  Information about the project can be found at 
       ⟨https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, send it to
       util-linux@vger.kernel.org.  This page was obtained from the
       project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/util-linux/util-linux.git⟩ on
       2018-02-02.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit that
       was found in the repository was 2018-02-01.)  If you discover any
       rendering problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe
       there is a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

util-linux                        June 2011                        RENAME(1)

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