![]() The 'basename' command is a useful tool in Bash for extracting the file name from a given file path. For more information, read our affiliate disclosure. If you click an affiliate link and subsequently make a purchase, we will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you (you pay nothing extra). Important disclosure: we're proud affiliates of some tools mentioned in this guide. In Bash, users can perform various tasks related to file names, such as extracting, renaming, and searching for files based on their names or patterns. They often contain information about the content or purpose of the file and can include a file extension that indicates the file type. One of the essential tasks in Bash is working with files and directories, which includes handling and manipulating file names.įile names are unique identifiers for files within a directory. It is the default shell for most Linux distributions and macOS, providing users with a powerful and flexible way to interact with their systems. Check this interactive example, which is more intuitive.The Bash (Bourne Again SHell) is a widely-used Unix shell and command-line interface for interacting with an operating system. Simply do an ls command, to get the list and use it as your test example text in there. I know my way around regex, but if you need to try before making changes, use an online tool to simulate the replacements. Then " (. )" captures all the remaining characters, in capture group 2. The pattern " (\d_)" captures six digits followed by two underscores, in group 1 (a parenthesis creates a capture group in regex). I wrote the regular expression that separates the two areas of interest in the filename. Each file came with a preceding id number, different on each sample. I downloaded this sound pack from pjcohen user in. Later I discovered that I can have the same results I needed by just using rename command alone. I don't know my way around combining commands in Linux very well, but an answer to this stack overflow question offered the perfect solution. I still recommend doing a backup anyway, just in case. In that way you can make sure that the expression works like you expected. The -n flag will make the command tell you the changes, but not actually change anything. One important advice, if you don't want to mess up your files, is to use the -n flag before actually doing the renaming. Rename 's/(regex pattern)/(replace pattern)/' * For security against your own mistakes, I advice you to do these changes only in folders that do not contain other folders, and keep a copy of the files without renaming safe somewhere else. Regular expressions can be a bit daunting at the beginning, but thanks to online tools such as, you can try out how the expression works before touching the filenames. I usually create a regular expression that separates the name into sections of interest. How to useĬombining Linux shell's find and rename commands, it is possible to use a regular expression to rename the files intelligently. Other possible use, is to homogenize certain text sections across all the files. One example is removing a section of the filename that makes the names unnecessarily long. ![]() I also give some insight on how to make this task a bit more intuitive. With this method you can rename files that match a description, match the sections that compose the filename and selectively remove, replace or append to each one of these sections. ![]() I wrote this guide mostly as a code snippet for myself to come back to. It is, however, hard to find some free tool to do this, and often these tools are paid or have nonsense limitations. Rewriting the contents of the files one by one, is the kind of nonesense one is supposed to get rid of when using a computer. Very often I find myself in the need to rename a batch of files, usually to remove, replace or to add content on a certain part of that filenames.
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