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Advanced File Renaming in Terminal

Install rename Utility

brew install rename

sudo apt install rename

(Rename is built into Arch)

Remove First n Characters from Filenames

To remove the first 8 characters from filename, type the following

rename -n -v 's/^(.{8})//' *

-nis for no action and -vis to show the changes. If you are satisfied with the results you can remove the flags:

rename 's/^(.{8})//' *

Remove Last n Characters from Filenames (while keeping the extension you want)

If we want to remove the last 29 characters from all of the mkv files in a folder, however we want to keep the mkv extension, we can write:

rename -n -v 's/.{29}$/.mkv/' *.mkv

Again, -n is for no action and -vis to show the changes. If you are satisfied with the results you can remove those two flags.

Delete Part of a Filename

The rename option also allows you to delete a part of the filename by omitting the replacement part of the expression. For instance, if we want to shorten example into ex:

rename -v 's/ample//' *.txt

Rename Files with Similar Names

Another use for the rename option is to rename files with similar names. For instance, if we want to rename files with example and sample in their name to test:

rename -v 's/(ex|s)ample/test/' *.txt