davidfstr/renameregex

Renames files in bulk using regular expressions.

renameregex

Renames all files in the current directory using regular expression patterns.

For example renameregex '(.*)\.JPG' '\1\.jpg' will rename all files that end with .JPG to end with .jpg.

Real-world example:

[davidf Letters]$ renameregex '(.*?) *\((.*)\)(.*)' '\2 - \1\3'

Letter to Arlene (2010-08-18).JPG => 2010-08-18 - Letter to Arlene.JPG
Letter to Arlene (2010-08-18).rtf => 2010-08-18 - Letter to Arlene.rtf
Letter to Arlene (2011-03-03).jpg => 2011-03-03 - Letter to Arlene.jpg
Letter to Arlene (2011-11-06).rtf => 2011-11-06 - Letter to Arlene.rtf
Letter to Arlene (2012-02-23).rtf => 2012-02-23 - Letter to Arlene.rtf
Letter to Arlene (2012-07-07).rtf => 2012-07-07 - Letter to Arlene.rtf
Letter to Arlene (2012-11-25).rtf => 2012-11-25 - Letter to Arlene.rtf
Letter-Photo (2011-03-03).graffle => 2011-03-03 - Letter-Photo.graffle

Okay? [y/N] y

It is also possible to specify -r to search subdirectories recursively for files to rename.

Requirements

• OS X or Linux
• Python 3.4 or later

Installation

$ mkdir -p ~/bin
$ cd ~/bin
$ git clone https://github.com/davidfstr/renameregex.git
      # ...or download this repository to ~/bin/renameregex
$ echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/bin/renameregex"' >> ~/.profile

Usage

renameregex filename_regex replacement_pattern

Renames all files in the current directory that match the pattern filename_regex to a new name based on the replacement_pattern.

Before the rename is applied, a preview is printed of what files will be renamed and what they well be renamed to.

Arguments

• filename_regex — A Perl-compatible regular expression (PCRE), specifically a Python regular expression, that is used to identify files to rename.

• replacement_pattern — A Python regex replacement string used to generate the new filenames. Expressions like \1 and \2 can be used to refer to groups matched by filename_regex.

Changelog

• 2.0
  • Features:
    • Add -r option to search directories recursively.
  • Breaking Changes:
    • Substitution patterns use the syntax \1 rather than $1 for backreferences.
  • Internal Changes:
    • Rewrite script in Python rather than Java.
• 1.0
  • Initial version.

License

This software is licensed under the MIT License.

renameregex's Issues

Installation issues

1. Copying the terminal commands is difficult because of the $ in the instructions. If they weren't there I could just copy and paste the entire set of commands into a terminal.
2. The modification to ~/.profile doesn't seem to work on stock OS X 10.7. Investigation required.
3. The renameregex trampoline script doesn't work correctly on OS X 10.4.11. The incantation used to determine the current SCRIPT_DIR is incorrectly returning the directory from which renameregex was invoked rather than the directory in which the script resides. Perhaps due to an old version of bash?