Which command should you use to rename or move a file or directory )? In Linux?
You rename a directory by moving it to a different name. Use the mv command to rename directories. Show
$ pwd /home/user2/veggies $ ls broccoli $ mv broccoli carrots $ ls carrots You can also use mv to move a directory to a location within another directory. $ pwd /home/user2/veggies $ ls carrots $ mv carrots ../veggies2 $ ls ../veggies2 carrots In this example, the directory carrots is moved from veggies to veggies2 with the mv command. Get to grips with the file renaming powerhouse of the Linux world and give for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0—and yourself—a rest. for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done1 is flexible, fast, and sometimes even easier. Here’s a tutorial to this powerhouse of a command. What’s Wrong With mv?There’s nothing wrong with for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 . The command does a fine a job, and it is found on all Linux distributions, in macOS, and in other Unix-like operating systems. So it’s always available. But sometimes you just need a bulldozer, not a shovel. The for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 command has a purpose in life, and that is to move files. It is a happy side effect that it can be used to move an existing file into a new file, with a new name. The net effect is to rename the file, so we get what we want. But for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 is not a dedicated file renaming tool. Renaming a Single File With mvTo use for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 to rename a file type for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0, a space, the name of the file, a space, and the new name you wish the file to have. Then press Enter. You can use for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 to check the file has been renamed. mv oldfile.txt newfile.txt ls *.txt Renaming Multiple Files with mvThings get trickier when you want to rename multiple files. for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 has no capability to deal with renaming multiple files. You must resort to using some nifty Bash tricks. That’s fine if you know some medium-grade command-line fu, but the complexity of renaming multiple files with for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 stands in stark contrast to the ease of using for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 to rename a single file. Things escalate quickly. Let’s say we’ve got a directory with a variety of files in it, of differing types. Some of these files have a “.prog” extension. We want to rename them at the command line so that they have a “.prg” extension. How do we wrangle for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 into doing that for us? Let’s take a look at the files. ls *.prog -l Here’s one way to do it that doesn’t resort to writing an actual Bash script file. for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done DId that work? Let’s check the files and see. ls *.pr* So, yes, it worked. They’re all “.prg” files now, and there are no “.prog” files in the directory. What Just Happened?What did that long command actually do? Let’s break it down. for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done The first part starts a loop that is going to process each “.prog” file in the directory, in turn. The next part says what the processing will do. It is using for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done0 to move each file to a new file. The new file is going to be named with the original file’s name excluding the “.prog” part. A new extension of “.prg” will be used instead. The last part ends the loop after each file has been processed. There Has to be a Simpler WayMost definitely. It is the ls *.pr*3 command. ls *.pr*3 is not part of a standard Linux distribution, so you will need to install it. It also has a different name in different families of Linux, but they all work the same way. You’ll just have to substitute the appropriate command name according to the Linux flavor you’re using. in Ubuntu and Debian-derived distributions you install ls *.pr*3 like this: sudo apt-get install rename In Fedora and RedHat-derived distributions you install ls *.pr*6 like this. Note the initial “p,” which stands for Perl. sudo dnf install prename To install it in Manjaro Linux use the following command. Note that the renaming command is called ls *.pr*7. sudo pacman -Syu perl-rename Let’s Do That AgainAnd this time we’ll use ls *.pr*3. We’ll roll back the clock so that we have a set of “.prog” files. ls *.prog Now let’s use the following command to rename them. We’ll then check with for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 whether it worked. Remember to substitute ls *.pr*3 with the appropriate command name for your Linux if you’re not using Ubuntu or a Debian-derived Linux. ls *.txt0 ls *.pr* That worked, they’re now all “.prg” files, and there are no “.prog” files left in the directory. What Happened This TIme?Let’s explain that bit of magic, in three parts. The first part is the command name, ls *.pr*3 (or ls *.pr*6 or ls *.pr*7 , for the other distributions). The last part is for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done4, which tells ls *.pr*3 to operate on all “.prog” files. The middle part defines the work we want to be done on each filename. The for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done6 means substitute. The first term ( for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7) is what ls *.pr*3 will search for in each filename and the second term ( for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done9) is what it will be substituted with. The middle part of the command, or central expression, is a Perl ‘regular expression‘ and it is what gives the ls *.pr*3 command its flexibility. Changing Other Parts of a FilenameWe’ve changed filename extensions so far, let’s amend other parts of the filenames. In the directory are a lot of C source code files. All of the filenames are prefixed with “slang_”. We can check this with for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7. ls *.txt2 We are going to replace all occurrences of “slang_” with “sl_”. The format of the command is already familiar to us. We’re just changing the search term, the replacement term, and the file type. ls *.txt3 This time we are looking for “.c” files, and searching for “slang_”. Whenever “slang_” is found in a filename it is substituted with “sl_”. We can check the result of that command by repeating the for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 command from above with the same parameters: ls *.txt2 Deleting Part of a FilenameWe can remove a part of a filename by substituting the search term with nothing. ls *.txt5 ls *.txt6 ls *.txt5 We can see from the for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 command that our “.c” files are all prepended with “sl_”. Let’s get rid of that altogether. The ls *.pr*3 command follows the same format as before. We’re going to be looking for “.c” files. The search term is “sl_”, but there is no substitution term. Two backslashes without anything between them means nothing, an empty string. ls *.pr*3 will process each “.c” file in turn. It will search for “sl_” in the filename. If it is found, it will be replaced by nothing. In other words, the search term is deleted. The second use of the for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 command confirms that the “sl_” prefix has been removed from every “.c” file. Limit Changes to Specific Parts of FilenamesLet’s use for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 to look at files that have the string “param” in their filename. Then we’ll use ls *.pr*3 to replace that string with the string “parameter”. We’ll use for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 once more to see the effect the ls *.pr*3 command has had on those files. ls *.txt8 ls *.txt9 ls *.txt8 Four files are found that have “param” in their filename. param.c, param_one.c, and param_two.c all have “param” at the start of their name. third_param.c has “param” at the end of its name, just before the extension. The ls *.pr*3 command is going to search for “param” everywhere in the filename, and replace it with “parameter” in all cases. The second use of the for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 command shows us that that is exactly what has happened. Whether “param” was at the start or at the end of the filename, it has been replaced by “parameter.” We can use Perl’s metacharacters to refine the behavior of the middle expression. Metacharacters are symbols that represent positions or sequences of characters. For example, sudo dnf install prename3 means “start of a string,” sudo dnf install prename4 means “end of a string,” and sudo dnf install prename5 means any single character (apart from a newline character). We’re going to use the start of string metacharacter ( sudo dnf install prename3 ) to restrict our search to the start of the filenames. ls *.prog -l1 ls *.prog -l2 ls *.prog -l1 ls *.prog -l4 The files we renamed earlier are listed, and we can see the string “parameter” is at the start of three filenames and it is at the end of one of the filenames. Our ls *.pr*3 command uses the start of line sudo dnf install prename8) metacharacter before the search term “parameter.” This tells ls *.pr*3 to only consider the search term to have been found if it is at the start of the filename. The search string “parameter” will be ignored if it is anywhere else in the filename. Checking with for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7, we can see that the filename that had “parameter” at the end of the filename has not been modified, but the three filenames that had “parameter” at the start of their names have had the search string replaced by the substitute term “value.” The power of ls *.pr*3 lies in the power of Perl. All of the power of Perl is at your disposal. Searching With Groupingsls *.pr*3 has yet more tricks up its sleeve. Let’s consider the case where you might have files with similar strings in their names. They’re not exactly the same strings, so a simple search and substitution won’t work here. In this example we use for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 to check which files we have that start with “str”. There are two of them, string.c and strangle.c. We can rename both strings at once using a technique called grouping. The central expression of this ls *.pr*3 command will search for strings within filenames that have the character sequence “stri” or “stra” where those sequences are immediately followed by “ng”. In other words, our search term is going to look for “string” and “strang”. The substitution term is “bang”. ls *.prog -l5 ls *.prog -l6 ls *.prog -l7 Using for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 a second time confirms that string.c has become bang.c and strangle.c is now bangle.c. Using Translations With renameThe ls *.pr*3 command can perform actions on filenames called translations. A simple example of a translation would be to force a set of filenames into uppercase. In the ls *.pr*3 command below notice that we’re not using an sudo pacman -Syu perl-rename8 to start the central expression, we’re using sudo pacman -Syu perl-rename9. This tells ls *.pr*3 we’re not performing a substitution; we’re performing a translation. The ls *.prog1 term is a Perl expression that means all lowercase characters in the sequence from a to z. Similarly, the ls *.prog2 term represents all uppercase letters in the sequence from A to Z. The central expression in this command could be paraphrased as “if any of the lowercase letters from a to z are found in the filename, replace them with the corresponding characters from the sequence of uppercase characters from A to Z.” To force the filenames of all “.prg” files to uppercase, use this command: rename ‘y/a-z/A-Z/’ *.prg ls *.prog -l8 The for f in *.prog; do mv -- "$f" "${f%.prog}.prg"; done7 command shows us that all of the “.prg” filenames are now in uppercase. In fact, to be strictly accurate, they’re not “.prg” files anymore. They’re “.PRG” files. Linux is case sensitive. We can reverse that last command by reversing the position of the ls *.prog1 and ls *.prog2 terms in the central expression. rename ‘y/A-Z/a-z/’ *.PRG ls *.prog -l9 You (Wo|Do)n’t Learn Perl in Five MinutesGetting to grips with Perl is time well spent. But to start using the time-saving capabilities of the ls *.pr*3 command, you don’t need to have much Perl knowledge at all to reap large benefits in power, simplicity and time. Which command is used to rename the directory name in Linux?You rename a directory by moving it to a different name. Use the mv command to rename directories. You can also use mv to move a directory to a location within another directory.
Which Linux command is used to move a file from a directory?To move files, use the mv command (man mv), which is similar to the cp command, except that with mv the file is physically moved from one place to another, instead of being duplicated, as with cp. Common options available with mv include: -i -- interactive.
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