Batch renaming files with Bash

bash shell file-rename
Jeremy L picture Jeremy L · Mar 2, 2009 · Viewed 86.9k times · Source

How can Bash rename a series of packages to remove their version numbers? I've been toying around with both expr and %%, to no avail.

Examples:

Xft2-2.1.13.pkg becomes Xft2.pkg

jasper-1.900.1.pkg becomes jasper.pkg

xorg-libXrandr-1.2.3.pkg becomes xorg-libXrandr.pkg

Answer

richq picture richq · Mar 2, 2009

You could use bash's parameter expansion feature

for i in ./*.pkg ; do mv "$i" "${i/-[0-9.]*.pkg/.pkg}" ; done

Quotes are needed for filenames with spaces.

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