Rename multiple files, but only rename part of the filename in Bash - bash

Question

I know how I can rename files and such, but I'm having trouble with this.
I only need to rename test-this in a for loop.
test-this.ext
test-this.volume001+02.ext
test-this.volume002+04.ext
test-this.volume003+08.ext
test-this.volume004+16.ext
test-this.volume005+32.ext
test-this.volume006+64.ext
test-this.volume007+78.ext

Answer 1

If you have all of these files in one folder and you're on Linux you can use:
rename 's/test-this/REPLACESTRING/g' *
The result will be:
REPLACESTRING.ext
REPLACESTRING.volume001+02.ext
REPLACESTRING.volume002+04.ext
...
rename can take a command as the first argument. The command here consists of four parts:
s: flag to substitute a string with another string,
test-this: the string you want to replace,
REPLACESTRING: the string you want to replace the search string with, and
g: a flag indicating that all matches of the search string shall be replaced, i.e. if the filename is test-this-abc-test-this.ext the result will be REPLACESTRING-abc-REPLACESTRING.ext.
Refer to man sed for a detailed description of the flags.

Answer 2

Use rename as shown below:
rename test-this foo test-this*
This will replace test-this with foo in the file names.
If you don't have rename use a for loop as shown below:
for i in test-this*
do
mv "$i" "${i/test-this/foo}"
done

Answer 3

Function
I'm on OSX and my bash doesn't come with rename as a built-in function. I create a function in my .bash_profile that takes the first argument, which is a pattern in the file that should only match once, and doesn't care what comes after it, and replaces with the text of argument 2.
rename() {
for i in $1*
do
mv "$i" "${i/$1/$2}"
done
}
Input Files
test-this.ext
test-this.volume001+02.ext
test-this.volume002+04.ext
test-this.volume003+08.ext
test-this.volume004+16.ext
test-this.volume005+32.ext
test-this.volume006+64.ext
test-this.volume007+78.ext
Command
rename test-this hello-there
Output
hello-there.ext
hello-there.volume001+02.ext
hello-there.volume002+04.ext
hello-there.volume003+08.ext
hello-there.volume004+16.ext
hello-there.volume005+32.ext
hello-there.volume006+64.ext
hello-there.volume007+78.ext

Answer 4

Without using rename:
find -name test-this\*.ext | sed 'p;s/test-this/replace-that/' | xargs -d '\n' -n 2 mv
The way it works is as follows:
find will, well, find all files matching your criteria. If you pass -name a glob expression, don't forget to escape the *.
Pipe the newline-separated* list of filenames into sed, which will:
a. Print (p) one line.
b. Substitute (s///) test-this with replace-that and print the result.
c. Move on to the next line.
Pipe the newline-separated list of alternating old and new filenames to xargs, which will:
a. Treat newlines as delimiters (-d '\n').
b. Call mv repeatedly with up to 2 (-n 2) arguments each time.
For a dry run, try the following:
find -name test-this\*.ext | sed 'p;s/test-this/replace-that/' | xargs -d '\n' -n 2 echo mv
*: Keep in mind it won't work if your filenames include newlines.

Answer 5

to rename index.htm to index.html
rename [what you want to rename] [what you want it to be] [match on these files]
rename .htm .HTML *.htm
renames index.htm to index.html
It will do this for all files that match *.htm in the folder.

Answer 6

thx for your passion and answers. I also find a solution for me to rename multiple files on my linux terminal and directly add a little counter. With this I have a very good chance to have better SEO names.
Here is the command
count=1 ; zmv '(*).jpg' 'new-seo-name--$((count++)).jpg'
I also do a live coding video and publush it to YouTube