Renaming muliple files at once

Question

I have a bunch of wav files I converted to mp3 files using ffmpeg.

Now the mp3 files are all named file.wav.mp3.

How can I remove the .wav suffix while keeping the rest of the file name? I would like to do this on a whole directory at once.

you'll need a script or a small C program to do this. any experience in system programming ? — Giorgos Saridakis, Jul 29 '20 at 19:48
Hint - it's the same as https://askubuntu.com/questions/839959/bulk-rename-files and probably quite a few other questions in the SE network. — Grzegorz Oledzki, Jul 30 '20 at 09:15
Does this answer your question? How do I easily rename multiple files using command line? — kashish, Aug 01 '20 at 12:48

score 20 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 29 '20 at 19:59

20

With a shell loop, removing the shortest "double dot suffix"

for f in *.wav.mp3; do echo mv "$f" "${f%.*.*}.mp3"; done

or (my personal favorite for things like this) with mmv from package mmv

mmv -n '*.wav.mp3' '#1.mp3'

Remove the echo or the -n as appropriate once you are happy that they are doing the right thing.

answered Jul 29 '20 at 19:59

steeldriver

136,215
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thanks, i like the mmv option. really simple – un_armed_pawn Jul 29 '20 at 20:23
If you are using zsh, zmv is also great. – 0x5453 Jul 31 '20 at 12:39
I always recommend using mv -n or -i for bulk/automated renames like this, to avoid the possibility of silently & irreversibly deleting files if there's a name conflict. – Gordon Davisson Jul 31 '20 at 22:25

waltinator · Answer 2 · 2020-08-01T19:26:39.860

19

Read man rename and do something like:

rename 's/.wav.mp3/.mp3/' *.wav.mp3

You may have to sudo apt install rename, first.

edited Aug 01 '20 at 19:26

answered Jul 29 '20 at 19:51

waltinator

36,399

3

For this to work, you should install the rename package first. It is not installed by default. – Puspam Jul 29 '20 at 19:54
7

... perhaps s/\.wav\.mp3$/.mp3/ to err on the safe side...? – steeldriver Jul 29 '20 at 19:54
1

I included an example in my answer. Didn't that help? – waltinator Jul 29 '20 at 20:07
7

I recommend always running rename with the -n option first to see what it will do, then removing -n once one is satisfied. – Eliah Kagan Jul 29 '20 at 20:26

score 7 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 30 '20 at 18:17

7

In the file browser in Ubuntu, you can select multiple files and rename them according to a pattern by just hitting F2 or right-clicking and selecting Rename.

Here I am replacing x with _by_. In your case you can replace .wav with an empty string.

edited Jul 30 '20 at 18:17

BeastOfCaerbannog

14,585

answered Jul 30 '20 at 18:12

Mr Felix U

195

Thanks Mr Felix U for this tip. I have been using RANGER for this operation for a long time. But this is much simpler. – Jul 30 '20 at 18:37

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Jul 30 '20 at 10:50

4

As you can see there are multiple ways to achieve this. Another way using the basename command is shown below:

for file in ./*.wav.mp3
do
    mv "$file" "$(basename "$file" .wav.mp3)".mp3 
done

edited Jul 30 '20 at 10:50

steeldriver

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answered Jul 29 '20 at 20:10

turbulence

804

@steeldriver Thank you for pointing to this nice article. I have updated the answer accordingly. – turbulence Jul 30 '20 at 03:56
2

I added quotes around the command substitution as well - remember, if $file contains whitespace, then basename "$file" .wav.mp3 will as well. – steeldriver Jul 30 '20 at 10:51

Puspam · Answer 5 · 2020-07-30T09:54:32.560

2

If you have all the files named in .wav.mp3 format, then use the following command:

for i in *.wav.mp3; do echo $i; mv "$i" "${i::-8}.mp3"; done

edited Jul 30 '20 at 09:54

answered Jul 29 '20 at 19:49

Puspam

833

1

String manipulation takes negative values so "${i::-8}.mp3" should generate same result. Better to quote the whole string than to concat the strings – Jul 30 '20 at 05:53
Thanks for the suggestion. I have edited it. – Puspam Jul 30 '20 at 09:54

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 30 '20 at 08:36

1

When in the directory with the .wav.mp3 files:

for i in *.wav.mp3; do mv "$i" "$(echo $i | sed s/.wav//g)"; done

That said, you may be able to use the same for your ffmpeg command so you don't have to rename them later.

answered Jul 30 '20 at 08:36

cde

111

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 01 '20 at 11:34

I just want to add a tool tip:

A real nice program for such tasks is emv.

You run it as `emv .wav.mp3 and it opens an editor. You can then use search & replace. Then you save the file and close the editor and the program renames your files.

This is especially handy, when you know how to use an advanced editor like vim, but even when most simple editors support search & replace, what is what you usually need for problems like yours.

baponkar · Answer 8 · 2020-08-01T20:58:40.890

0

#!/bin/bash
for i in *
do
 #Define the string value
 text="$i"

 # Set .wav as the delimiter
 IFS='.wav.'

 #Read the split words into an array based on space delimiter
read -a strarr <<< "$text"
mv "$i" "${strarr[0]).mp3" #changing input file name


done

edited Aug 01 '20 at 20:58

answered Aug 01 '20 at 20:53

baponkar

173

Renaming muliple files at once

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