Rename multiple files in terminal

Question

I have 40 mp4 files in a folder.

Every file starts with video_. Every file is of format video_*.mp4.

I need to rename all the files with video_ removed from the begining of every file. How can I do that from terminal?

@JacobVlijm I know we have lots of these questions. But for a newbie it is not clear how to use the other answer. And this is not quite a duplicate. — Pilot6, Sep 22 '15 at 15:56

score 33 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 15 '18 at 12:13

33

You can do it by a terminal command in a directory where these files are located.

rename 's/^video_//' *.mp4

That means select all filenames started with video_ and replace video_ with nothing. I guess s is for "substitute".

^ shows the beginning of string. If you omit ^, the first occurrence of video_ will be removed no matter where it is located in the string. But in your case it does not really matter.

Note: Ubuntu versions above 17.04 don't ship with rename package, however you can still install it from default repositories via sudo apt install rename

edited Dec 15 '18 at 12:13

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy

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answered Sep 22 '15 at 11:55

Pilot6

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or rename 's/^.*?_//' *.mp4 – Avinash Raj Sep 22 '15 at 12:00
Every file starts with video_. Every file is of format video_*.mp4. – Avinash Raj Sep 22 '15 at 12:05
what does s/ and // mean in rename 's/^video_//' *.mp4 ? – kashish Sep 22 '15 at 12:15
@AvinashRaj Ah you're right, my bad. Then, if we're golfing, rename 's/.*?_//' *.mp4 ;) – kos Sep 22 '15 at 12:17
@kashish You can read the duplicate link. There is a good explanation. – Pilot6 Sep 22 '15 at 12:19

heemayl · Answer 2 · 2015-09-22T12:03:12.180

Using rename (prename) :
```
rename -n 's/^video_//' video_*.mp4
```
If you are satisfies with the changes that are going to be made, remove -n to let the operation happens actually :
```
rename 's/^video_//' video_*.mp4
```
Using bash parameter expansion :
```
for file in video_*.mp4; do mv -i "$file" "${file#video_}"; done
```
- ${file#video_} is the parameter expansion pattern to remove video_ from the start of the file names.
Or
```
for file in video_*.mp4; do mv -i "$file" "${file/video_/}"; done        
```
- This one assumes video_ comes only once in file names
- ${file/video_/} is a bash parameter expansion pattern that will replace video_ from file names with blank.

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 22 '15 at 12:01

3

Using rename

rename 's/^video_//' *.mp4

edited Sep 22 '15 at 12:01

Avinash Raj

78,556

answered Sep 22 '15 at 11:54

A.B.

90,397

Rename multiple files in terminal

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